American Resistance

[DT1]

Them angry liberals
by tonyfv
Sun Oct 08, 2006 at 01:22:49 PM PDT
(Again freely ripped from thedailkos.com)
There's a lot of hype about the "angry liberals" and "Bush haters" in the wingnut world, spilling into the MSM. They say liberals are driven by irrational anger at Bush, visceral reactions to anything Republican, and really have nothing else to offer except negativism.
Of course, there is anger in the liberal community, and there is Bush hating. But they are wrong, for the most part, about negativism without alternatives - that just is a convenient device, one of many they employ, which are well-known to critical thinkers.
Below the fold, let me present a conclusion I've come to. A non-controversial one; just a thought.

tonyfv's diary :: ::
This point has probably been discussed here and other places, but since this is my diary, I thought to put my thoughts out about it, and since I am rather new here, I have not yet come across it so I hope this does not duplicate others. Accept my apology if this has been hashed to smithereens before. Move along, nothing to see here, and be nice about it... I am no great philosopher or reporter or researcher ;-)


My general impression of conservatives is that they are angry at everything. They act out of anger at anything that challenges their ironclad belief systems.

The translation of this emotion to the political arena really took off with the changes in the wind in the early 90s after the conservative era of Reagan and Bush I. They trotted out the Contract with America, taking advantage of a lazy Democratic majority in Congress, and began a drive to roll back progressive changes. These changes were perceived as a threat to their traditional values, and they felt that America would be ruined by further changes in that direction. I applaud the intention of “saving America”, but of course I do not agree with the means to their end, nor their picture of what a saved America would look like.

Their fears were strengthened and exploited by concerns that would benefit from returning to status quo, such as religious fundamentalists and dog-eat-dog capitalists, and the message rang true with many Americans willing to drink the Kool Aid. And thirsty they were.

Like caged animals, they lash out at everything that seems a threat. No thinking, no sober contemplation of arguments. Just that visceral dislike of change, the clinging to memories of protests during the Vietnam era and the segregated past, adoration of an Ozzie and Harriet America, and a longing to return to simpler times.

It's understandable - change is hard to deal with. But humanity cannot progress without change - it would be an impossible contradiction in terms. It could be argued successfully that they do not want progress at all, but the folly of it is that in general they do, because they like their TV and Internet and all the nice new material thingies progress brings.

I find a lot of truth and explanation for the phenomenon in Philip Slater’s Why America is Polarized.
These people that refuse to throw off the shackles of the past, whether out of laziness of thought, or admonitions from the pulpit (religious and media), now like to conveniently label liberals as angry and haters.

But what I see is that they are angry at everything. Anger voted the Republicans into majorities in Congress and the Executive. The reaction to 9/11 was driven by anger rather than reason. After Afghanistan, where for me anger and reason did converge, they branched off to Iraq just for anger’s sake. They pissed off most people and governments around the world. They focused on immediate gratification instead of dealing with real looming issues such as North Korea and Iran, the deterioration of the environment, the continued and growing disparity between rich and poor countries and rich and poor people, etc. Their domestic political agenda is based on anger and meanness, from barring GLBT people equal rights, to rollbacks of gains for other minorities, to attempted institution of state-supported religion, etc. Interesting, of course, is how this domestic agenda neatly intersects with the goals of fundamentalist Islamists and jihadists.

How dare they accuse liberals of being angry and hating? I, as a liberal myself, have anger and hate Bushco policies, but this anger is directed at a sliver of reality, not the whole thing. And I believe that most of us here and in other progressive communities feel the same way. And yes, we have positive alternatives to offer - but they are not as sound-bity as the media likes, and the right's propaganda machine certainly will not parrot them. They are well-thought out, smart solutions to the problems we face. Solutions based on a better understanding of the current world and human nature.

When you see/read them pull out the canard about angry and hating liberals, ask them if they are not angry themselves, if there are not things they hate, and how many there are. I bet their glass is more full than ours.

[DT1]

OPEN LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:
One Citizen's Bill of Impeachment
by STUART MARKOFF
A DECLARATION OF DIVORCE FROM,
AND IMPEACHMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT
OF THESE UNITED STATES CURRENTLY IN POWER AS OF THIS
OCTOBER, 2006 IN THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND TWENTY FIFTH
YEAR OF THE PROMULGATION OF THE CONSTITUTION.

"...in the trust we still have in the wisdom of the Founders and in the courage of the Legislative and the Judiciary to document and to pass judgment, and to rectify the CRIMINAL wrongs enumerated." When in the course of the history of this Republic, survivor of Rebellion, of the Great Depression, and of many wars, an Executive violates its contract with its citizens to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and fails to so uphold and defend its basic principles, putting the nation itself in jeopardy, and subverting its very purposes, then the citizens must exercise their right to reject such governance not only by the power of the vote but by petitioning the Legislative to institute proceedings of Impeachment against the Executive to reclaim the balance of the three branches as invisioned by the Authors and enshrined in the words of the Constitution itself.

To that end, We draw up this bill of high crimes and misdemeanors not only multitimes manifest but continuing, to the great harm, and maiming of this Republic, whereby we urge that the current President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Interior be impeached, removed from office, and rendered subject to prosecution for crimes against both the domestic and international order at trials by a jury of their peers, the ordinary citizens of the United States of America.

Wherefore, we list the wrongs inflicted upon us:
Waging war by lies, distortions, and a secret agenda;


Basing domestic policy on various grandiose usurpations of both the Legislative and Judicial functions;


Suspending basic rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights and in Common Law;


Refusing to carry out the express intent of legislation by invoking the expediency of sign-off statements;


Misusing the Armed Forces, and subjecting troops to retaliatory punishment by an Enemy;


Creating new enemies, and destroying American prestige with aggressive, hegemonic, and destabilizing policies;


Subverting the freedom of the press with paid propaganda disguised as open journalism;


And in general, exercising an Incompetence so willful that its consequences may take generations to repair.
THEREFORE DO WE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM OBEDIENCE TO SUCH UNLAWFUL AUTHORITY, EXCEPT AS CONTINGENT UPON SUCH TIME AS THEIR IMPEACHMENT, REMOVAL, AND TRIAL,

in the trust we still have in the wisdom of the Founders and in the courage of the Legislative and the Judiciary to document and to pass judgment, and to rectify the CRIMINAL wrongs enumerated.

Herewith we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor:

Stuart L. Markoff, Baltimore, MD

Mod's quote:

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

-Samuel Adams

[DT1]

Here is a real heads-up...



www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/21/america/web.1221declassify.php

U.S. to declassify secrets aged 25 and older
By Scott Shane
Thursday, December 21, 2006
WASHINGTON

It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.

At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many FBI cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government's first automatic declassification of records.

Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret.

Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.

And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request.

Many historians had expected President George W. Bush to scrap the deadline. His administration has overseen the reclassification of many historical files and restricted access to presidential papers of past administrations, as well as contemporary records.

Practical considerations, including a growing backlog of records at the National Archives, mean that it could take months before the declassified papers are ready for researchers.

"Deadlines clarify the mind," said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive at George Washington University, which obtains and publishes historical government documents.

Despite what he called a disappointing volume of exemptions, Blanton said automatic declassification had "given advocates of freedom of information a real lever."

Gearing up to review aging records to meet the deadline, agencies have declassified more than one billion pages, shedding light on the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War and the network of Soviet agents in the American government.

Several hundred million pages will be declassified at midnight on Dec. 31, including 270 million pages at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has lagged most agencies in reviews.

J. William Leonard, who oversees declassification as head of the Information Security Oversight Office at the National Archives, said the threat that secret files might be made public without a security review had sent a useful chill through the bureaucracy.

"Unfortunately, you sometimes need a two-by-four to get agencies to pay attention," Leonard said. "Automatic declassification was essentially that two-by-four."

What surprises await in the documents is impossible to predict.

"It is going to take a generation for scholars to go through the material declassified under this process," said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

"It represents the classified history of a momentous period, the cold war," Aftergood said. "Almost every current headline has an echo in the declassified past, whether it's coping with nuclear weapons, understanding the Middle East or dictatorship and democracy in Latin America."

Anna K. Nelson, a historian at American University, said she hoped that the files would shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency role in Iran and deepen the documentation of the Jimmy Carter years, in particular the Camp David accords.

"Americans need to know this history, and the history is in those documents," Nelson said.

She said the National Archives staff was buried in a 400-million-page backlog that awaits processing and is not publicly available.

Also, a budget shortfall has cut back on evening and weekend access to the major research center of the archives, in College Park, Md.

"They can declassify the records, but the archives don't have the staff to handle them," Nelson said.

The first deadline was imposed in an executive order that President Bill Clinton signed in 1995, when officials realized that taxpayers were paying billions of dollars to protect a mountain of cold war documents.

The order gave agencies five years to declassify documents or show the need for continued secrecy.

When agencies protested that they could not meet the 2000 deadline, it was extended to 2003. Bush then granted another three-year extension, but put out the word that it was the last one, despite the new emphasis on security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a new war in Iraq.

"The Bush administration could have said, 'This is a Clinton thing,' and abandoned it," Aftergood, said. "To their credit, they did not."

As an enforceable deadline loomed, the intelligence agencies that produce most secret material add workers to plow through files from World War II.

The CIA has reviewed more than 100 million pages, released 30 million pages and created a database of documents, Crest, that is accessible from terminals at the National Archives. Although most of the documents are exempt, they can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The National Security Agency, the eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, has released 35 million pages, including an extensive collection on the Gulf of Tonkin incident that led to the escalation of the Vietnam War. The agency plans a major release early next year on the Israeli attack on the Liberty, an American eavesdropping ship, in 1967.

The FBI, by contrast, negotiated an exemption from the 1995 executive order and concluded last year that the 2003 executive order ended its special status. It has rushed to review material, seeking exemption for 50 million pages on intelligence, counterintelligence and terrorism, but leaving 270 million pages to be automatically declassified now.

Among those files, said David M. Hardy, the bureau declassification chief, are those on investigations of Americans with suspected ties to the Communist Party. Reviewers will keep working on the exempt material to see what can be released, but it is a slow process, Hardy said.

"The numbers of documents are staggering," Hardy said.

The bureau is studying digitizing documents and using computers to search for classified material. Some experts say mass declassification is not the smartest approach. L. Britt Snider, a former intelligence official who heads the Public Interest Declassification Board, which advises the White House, said most government records, even top-secret ones, were pretty boring.

"Rather than take this blunderbuss approach," Snider said, "I'd like to see the agencies concentrate first on what's interesting and what's important."

[michelle]

Folks, better start writing to your local Representatives, unless you don't mind being fingerprinted in order to obtain a driver's license.....Michelle

Maine rejects compliance with national ID card law
By Stacy A. Anderson, Los Angeles Times
January 26, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Maine became the first state in the nation yesterday to officially decline to comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, the federal law that critics say lays the foundation for the creation of a national identity card.

Both houses of the state Legislature -- unanimously in the Senate, 137 to 4 in the House -- approved a resolution rejecting compliance with the act, which requires states to replace their current drivers' licenses by May 2008 with forgery-proof cards embedded with private information. The legislatures urged its repeal .

To obtain the card, which is meant to ensure that the holder is in the country legally, an individual would be required to present a Social Security card, birth certificate, proof of residency, and a biometric identifier, such as a fingerprint. The card would employ "common machine-readable technology" that could be scanned to verify a person's identity.

All this information, digitally stored, would become part of a nationwide database, accessible by federal, state, and local government employees.

Privacy advocates argue that putting every driver's personal information in that database would facilitate identity theft. Shenna L. Bellows, executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, called it "a real ID nightmare."

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman, Jarrod Agen, did not comment directly on the Maine Legislature's action, saying only that the purpose of the act is to protect citizens, not make them more vulnerable.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

Source: tinyurl.com/2vsnaz

[DT1]

The Bush Administration in One Sentence
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Wednesday 28 February 2007

History is bunk.- Henry Ford
Just because the Supreme Court set that poison precedent and anointed Bush, who brought in a crowd of neocon yahoos which earned no attention before the 2000 campaign, just because we 'Muricans vote for the man and not the mob, which in this case turned into the mob that ruined the country, you know, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Perle and Feith and Ledeen and Negroponte ...

... just because unreasonably massive tax cuts were combined in 2001 with the economic depth-charge that was the Enron/Arthur Andersen/inflated revenues/overstated tax earnings scandal, which was umbilically connected to the White House, just because the economy (not to mention our whole psyche) absorbed another blow when four commercial airplanes somehow managed to pierce the most impenetrable air defense system in the history of the universe, fooling the entire intelligence community as well, if you believe what you hear...

... just because this happened despite a blizzard of warnings delivered in the weeks and months beforehand, along with a raft of information gathered by the previous administration, just because a bunch of anthrax got mailed to Democrats by the Ashcroft wing of the Republican Party in what were obvious assassination attempts and yet nothing but nothing has been done about it, just because the 9/11 attack was immediately - and I mean the day after immediately - grasped as an excuse to invade Iraq, just because virtually everyone in the administration lied with their bare faces hanging out about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, terrorism ties in Iraq, so break out the plastic sheeting and duct tape because we're all gonna die ...

... just because they did this in no small part to win the 2002 midterms by any means necessary, just because they have used that day against us with deliberation and intent, just because 3,160 American soldiers have been killed looking for 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is one million pounds) of sarin and mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, aerial drones to spray the aforementioned stuff, and let's not forget the uranium from Niger for use in Iraq's robust "nukular" program, all of which was described to the letter by Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address, claims that still remain today on the White House web site, on a page titled 'Disarm Saddam Hussein' ...

... just because the medical journal Lancet estimated that as many as 198,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed as well in the war to get at this stuff, and that was a while ago and a whole slew of bombings ago, just because none of the stuff was there, and by the way none of the stuff was there, and did I mention that none of the stuff was there, just because the idea that Hussein was allied with bin Laden was laughable because Osama has wanted Saddam's head on his battle standard for decades, just because the true source of world terrorism, which is Sunni Wahabbist extremism out of Saudi Arabia, goes completely unaddressed because the Houses of Bush and Saud have been partnered for decades ...

... just because the lie that says the GOP is strong on national defense still permeates everything, though the loss of those 3,160 soldiers combined with the grievous wounding of between 47,000 and 53,000 other soldiers amounts to the evisceration of between a fourth and a third of our entire active fighting force, which makes us safer in no way that can be fathomed, and never mind the soldiers living in filth and among rats and roaches because they have been deliberately shafted so the Bush boys can squeeze a few more pennies into the coffers of folks like Halliburton and Exxon...

... just because so much of 9/11 and this 'War on Terra' has to do with business arrangements going awry between these two Houses, just because a deep-cover CIA agent who was working to track any person or nation or group that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists got her cover and her network blown by administration officials who wanted to shut her husband and any other potential whistleblowers the hell up, just because the front company she was working out of called Brewster Jennings and Associates was likewise blown, thus torpedoing other agents and their networks, just because absolutely all of this went virtually unreported by the mainstream media until it was too late, if it was reported at all ...

... just because dangerous spies like Ahmad Chalabi used Judy Miller and the New York Times to disseminate the lie that Iraq was riddled with weapons, thus opening the floodgates for the rest of the media to repeat the lie, because once the Times says it, it must be true, just because this lack of reporting combined with an astounding level of cheerleading from the aforementioned media combined with some good old-fashioned vote fraud in places like Ohio, Florida and New Mexico gave the aforementioned group of yahoos four more years in 2004 ...

... just because this means the Iraq war will continue and Iran will probably be next, despite the fact that we basically gave the Iraqi government to Iran when we invaded and handed the Shi'ite majority control over the place, a majority that is ideologically and religiously allied with Iran, a majority controlled by two Shi'ite factions called Dawa and SCIRI, which have been creatures of Iran since the early 1980s, which were centrally involved in the 1983 Beirut bombing that killed more than 200 American Marines, just because we knew this going in but it happened anyway, and even though we know Iran is running Iraq, we still have to hear all this blather about Iran "interfering" in Iraq ...

... just because our phones are tapped and our homes are no longer protected from unreasonable searches, just because we torture at will, just because we detain forever and use habeas corpus like so much toilet paper, just because signing statements have dismantled the separation of powers one brick at a time, just because no page is safe in a Republican Congress, just because no bribe is too small in a Republican Congress, just because a Democratic resurgence in 2006 is only a tiny beginning and not any kind of an end, because these Bush boys have no intention of slowing down or backing off ...

... just because our national reputation is ravaged and our future has been sold out from under us, just because Truman's wartime economic footing has morphed into a machine that Eisenhower would recognize in horror as the very thing he warned us about before he left, just because the whole system now requires us to manufacture wars if none are available because the system itself has been wired to feed the beast no matter the consequences, just because television tells you not to worry, look at these breasts or this shaved starlet's head, or this shiny thing, look here, shhh, be silent, be still, sleep ...

... doesn't mean We The People are finished, because all of this is why "We The People" was written down in the first place, and though the day is late and the road is long and the chances for success are slim, We The People are here to stay, so strap in and look out, because we are just getting started, and the next sentence will be ours to write.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

[michelle]

Bravo to the good people of New Hampshire! Reply #18 on Jan 29, 2007, 2:51pm, Maine rejects compliance with national ID card law has previous info on this sore subject. My state hasn't rejected the national ID through our driver's licenses, but they haven't done anything to move toward it either. How does your state stand on this issue? You might want to check on it....Michelle

N.H. Governor Signs Law Banning Real ID

By NORMA LOVE, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007

(06-27) 19:23 PDT Concord, N.H. (AP) -- New Hampshire on Wednesday rejected the federal Real ID Act as tantamount to requiring a national ID card, joining five other states in opposing it.

South Carolina, Montana, Washington, Oklahoma and Maine also have rejected the federal act.

"Here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on being frugal, and here in New Hampshire, we pride ourselves on respecting the privacy of our neighbors," Gov. John Lynch said at the bill signing.

The law's supporters say it is needed to prevent terrorists and illegal immigrants from getting fake identification cards. Critics say it is too intrusive, too costly and likely to be abused by identity thieves.

The Real ID Act was passed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It requires all states to bring their driver's licenses under a national standard and to link their record-keeping systems. States must verify identification used to obtain a driver's license, such as birth certificates, Social Security numbers and passports.

Driver's licenses not meeting the standard won't be accepted as identification to board an airplane or enter a federal building.

New Hampshire's law calls the act "repugnant" to the state and federal constitutions. The law prohibits the state from complying with the act, which sets standards for state-issued driver's licenses.

"We are not about to be coerced into an unfunded mandate, especially one we'd have to pay for with our privacy," Lynch said.

In Washington on Wednesday, a group of senators including Republican John Sununu backed an effort to eliminate Real ID from the immigration bill.

"This amendment reinforces what the citizens of New Hampshire have known all along — Real ID is too intrusive, too expensive and unnecessary," Sununu said. "The federal government should work with the states to improve standards for issuing drivers' licenses, but the ultimate responsibility for issuing and maintaining that ID system should be kept by the states."

Congress set a deadline for states to meet uniform licensing standards by May 2008. President Bush recently bowed to pressure from the nation's governors and Congress and granted states until Dec. 31, 2009, to comply.

Source: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/27/national/a192314D93.DTL

[michelle]

Greedy White Founders?

In the following articles, we read of Columbia University professor of history and self-described socialist Charles A. Beard whose work is credited with providing scholars with the misconception that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealth interests. I have some of Beard's joint works with Mary R. Beard and it has been said that they became a sort of trademark in American historical reading. "Numerous historians—on both the right and the left—have since cited his work as evidence that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealth interests." Please note when reading historical texts that you are reading the historian's interpretation of history.

In the following articles, it is suggested that the neo-cons were quick to believe that "our nation was founded exclusively of, by and for “rich white men” and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the superrich. They would have us believe that the Constitution's signers didn't really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government."

I have read, Decision In Philadelphia The Constitutional Convention of 1787, [Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier] which tells who attended the Convention and who didn't or couldn't. It also gives a look at many of the delegates who did attend, and in individual chapters, gives their backgrounds, strengths and weaknesses, their virtues and foibles, their sometimes fiery arguments, and what and if they managed to get their personal and individual state's concerns into the formation of our national government.

Strong antinationalists like Sam Addams of Massachusetts, who is quoted at the end of Hartmann's essay, disapproved of the undertaking and did not attend the Convention, nor did Patrick Henry, Governor George Clinton of New York, and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. As a consequence, the Convention had a more nationalist tone than was true of American opinion in general at the time. The delegates then did not accurately reflect the basic attitudes of most Americans.

Although the delegates were in grave disagreement about how it should be done, they had come to build a solid nation under a solid government. Some would have been content with tinkering, and a few had no ideas at all about what should be done. The trait they all held in common was that our system had to be made to work better and many of them were prepared to make substantial changes in how things were done. Most saw themselves embarking on a great enterprise. It is most important to keep this in mind. Again and again, the delegates alluded to the fact that the eyes of the world were on them, that they were carrying the hopes of people everywhere in their hands. They were engaged in possibly the most important experiment a people ever undertook. Let me repeat that: "They were engaged in possibly the most important experiment a people ever undertook."

This experiment was to see if human beings could live in freedom under a government they would run themselves. Was it possible? Many people believed that it was not, that the common people were children and would always need the guiding hand of a prince, who would know what was best for them. As interested spectators around the world, especially those living under autocratic monarchs in Europe, notably in France, were acutely aware, if it could work in America, it could work elsewhere.

Speaking of France, I am currently reading Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy In America. It has been said of this work that, "No better study of a nation's institutions and culture than Tocqueville's Democracy In America has ever been written by a foreign observer; none perhaps as good." First published in 1835, Tocqueville had concerns about the effect of majority rule on the right's of individuals. He had profound insights into the great rewards and responsibilities of democratic government and his observations on the "almost royal prerogatives" of the president and the need for virtue in elected officials seem prophetic in today's times.

Michelle

Greedy White Founders?
by Tula Connell, Jul 4, 2007

Those of us involved in the ongoing struggle for economic justice don’t have much time in the day-to-day crush to think much about the nation’s past and how we got to where we are today. Occasions like the Fourth of July provide a good time to do so.

For many, the image of the Founding Fathers is one of elitist white men and slave owners who crafted a republic that, as James Madison famously wrote in the Federalist No. 10, would act as a restraint on

“citizens…united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

In other words, the structure of the U.S. government was specifically created to keep the “masses” under control.

While it’s true the founding fathers were all white men and nearly all slave owners, author and historian Thom Hartmann would have us believe they were more than just “greedy white men.” Hartmann, who now hosts a regular radio show on Air America, offers an intriguing perspective on the subject in his popular new book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class.

In his chapter on “The Myth of the Greedy Founders” (which we’ve excerpted here [see excerpt below...M], as an AFL-CIO guest column), Hartmann debunks Charles Beard’s 1913 An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Beard’s interpretation, says Hartmann, provided scholars with the misconception that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealth interests.

Unfortunately, many believe that our nation was founded exclusively of, by and for “rich white men” and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the superrich. They would have us believe that the Constitution’s signers didn’t really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government.

Instead, writes Hartmann:

The majority of the signers of the Constitution were actually acting against their own best economic interests when they put their signatures on that document, just as had the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Hartmann’s source for rebuttal to Beard is the 1958 publication, We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution, by historian Forrest McDonald. In it, McDonald bluntly states that Beard’s “economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work.”

Writes Hartmann:

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich. “These [bankruptcy/debt relief laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard’s hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent,” says McDonald. He adds: “Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write.

Ironically, the image of the founders perpetuated by Beard, a socialist, has been used by elitist politicians in recent years to advance an anti-worker agenda.

His myth unfortunately helps conservatives support ending the estate tax, or “death tax,” as the “the way the Founders would have wanted things” so that the very richest few can rule America.

But the signers didn’t send other people’s kids to war, as have two generations of the oligarchic Bush family. Many of the Founders themselves gave up everything, even risking (and losing) their lives, their life’s savings or their homes and families to conceive and birth this nation.

Neocons have a way of appropriating All-American ideals and turning them to their own inegalitarian purposes. In his recent biography of Tom Paine, historian Harvey Kaye shows how Paine, arguably the most democratic thinker circulating amid the likes of Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton, vehemently opposed slavery and outlined a series of public initiatives to address the inequalities that made life oppressive for working people. Paine was so progressive the nation’s elites sought to bury him from public memory. Yet the author of Common Sense has been championed in recent years by Ronald Reagan and those even further to the reactionary side. As Kaye writes:

Today, ever since Ronald Reagan recited Paine’s words in 1980, not only progressives, but also conservatives, quote Paine. Yet the latter really do not embrace him and his arguments—truly, they cannot. Furthering the interests of corporations over those of working people, they have subordinated the Republic to the marketplace and overseen a concentration of wealth and power recalling the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age. Carrying on culture wars, they have divided the nation and undermined the wall separating church and state. And lying or hiding the truth, they have corrupted American public life and jeopardized our standing in the world.

The vision of the founders in embarking on this American experiment was not monolithic, nor were the documents they created—hence the endless court fights over interpreting the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Hartmann reminds us as a movement, we need to reclaim the democracy and economic justice promised more than 200 years ago in the actions and words of those who saw the promise of the new nation not as a one-time offer to the poor, the tired and the huddled masses—but as an ongoing project.

Hartmann provides an excellent corrective and a clarion call for those of us in the progressive movement to take back our nation, white founding men and all.

Source:
blog.aflcio.org/2007/07/04/greedy-white-founders/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Myth of the Greedy Founders
Thom Hartmann

This is excerpted from Thom Hartmann's Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class. Hartmann is a nationally syndicated daily talk show host at Air America Radio, and Screwed is available at the Union Shop Online™.[/i]

Unfortunately, many believe that our nation was founded exclusively of, by and for “rich white men” and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the superrich. They would have us believe that the Constitution’s signers didn’t really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government.

But the signers didn’t send other people’s kids to war, as have two generations of the oligarchic Bush family. Many of the Founders themselves gave up everything, even risking (and losing) their lives, their life’s savings or their homes and families to conceive and birth this nation.

The theory of the “greedy white Founders” was first widely advanced by Columbia University professor of history and self-described socialist Charles A. Beard, who in 1913 published a book titled An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

Numerous historians—on both the right and the left—have since cited his work as evidence that America was founded solely for the purpose of protecting wealth interests. His myth unfortunately helps conservatives support ending the estate tax, or “death tax,” as the “the way the Founders would have wanted things” so that the very richest few can rule America.

But Beard was wrong.

The majority of the signers of the Constitution were actually acting against their own best economic interests when they put their signatures on that document, just as had the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

In 1958, one of America’s great professors of history, Forrest McDonald, published We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution that bluntly states that Beard’s “economic interpretation of the Constitution does not work.”

Over the course of more than four hundred meticulously researched pages, McDonald goes back to original historical records and reveals who was promoting and who was opposing the new Constitution and why.

McDonald notes that a quarter of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had voted in their own state legislatures for laws that would have helped debtors and the poor and thus harmed the interests of the rich. “These [bankruptcy/debt relief laws] were the very kinds of laws which, according to Beard’s hypothesis, the delegates had convened to prevent,” says McDonald. He adds: “Another fourth of the delegates had important economic interests that were adversely affected, directly and immediately, by the Constitution they helped write.

While Beard theorized the Framers of the Constitution were largely drawn from the class of wealthy bankers and businessmen, McDonald showed that the “most common and by far the most important property holdings of the delegates were not, as Beard has asserted, mercantile, manufacturing and public security investments, but agricultural property.” Most were farmers or plantation owners, and owing a lot of land did not make one rich in those days.

McDonald then goes into an exhaustive and detailed state-by-state analysis of the state constitutional ratifying conventions that finally brought the U.S. Constitution into law. For example, in Delaware which voted for ratification, almost 77 percent of the delegates were farmers, more than two-thirds of them small farmers with incomes ranging from 75 cents to $5.00 a week. Only slightly more than 23 percent of the delegates were professional men—doctors, judges and lawyers. None of the delegates was a merchant, manufacturer, banker or speculator in Western lands.

But did farmers support the Constitution because they were slave owners or the wealthiest of the landowners, as Beard had guessed back in 1913?

McDonald shows that this certainly was not the case in Northern states like New Hampshire and New Jersey, which were not slave states. But what about Virginia and North Carolina, the two largest slaveholding states, asks McDonald rhetorically. Were their plantation owners in favor of the Constitution because it protected their economic and slaveholding interests?

“The opposite is true,” writes McDonald.

In both states the wealthy planters—those with personality interests [slaves] as well as those without personality interests—were divided approximately equally on the issue of ratification. In North Carolina small farmers and debtors were likewise equally divided, and in Virginia the great mass of the small farmers and a large majority of the debtors favored ratification.

So what did motivate the Framers and the Constitution?

Along with the answer to this question, we may find the answer to another question historians have asked for two centuries: Why was the Constitutional Convention held in secret, behind locked doors; and why did James Madison not publish his own notes of the convention until 1840, just after the last of the other participants died?

The reason, simply put, was that most of the wealthy men among the delegates were betraying the interests of their own economic class. They were voting for democracy instead of oligarchy. They were voting to create and maintain a middle class instead of creating a nation of, by and for the rich.

The people who hammered out the Constitution had such a strong feeling of history and destiny that it at times overwhelmed them. Their writings show that they truly believed they were doing sacred work—something greater than themselves, their personal interests and even the narrow interests of their wealthy constituents back in their home states.

The Founders’ decision to create a democracy in America was not easy. As John Quincy Adams said, “Posterity—you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”

They were a tiny group, and the British Empire was very large. How did they succeed?

Samuel Adams, the tavern owner in Boston who was instrumental in stirring up the Boston Tea Party, said, “It does not take a majority to prevail. But rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

That’s who the Founders were and what they did. They were revolutionaries who knew that a vital democracy lay in supporting the middle class and minimizing corporate power. And that’s what we must be and what we must do.

Source:
www.aflcio.org/mediacenter/speakout/thom_hartmann.cfm

[michelle]

The Bush administration has agreed to pay $80,000 to a husband and wife who were ejected from a presidential rally because of their anti-Bush T-shirts.

Democratic government is limited or constitutional government. The primary sanction for insuring that the government does not exceed the limits of its authority is the right of unfettered criticism plus the power to throw the bums out of office at election time. The Bush Administration has worked overtime to take these sanctions away from us. They don't always win, however, as you will see in the following article. Congrats to Jeffery and Nicole Rank who had their day in court and won $80,000 for their being ejected from a presidential rally because of anti-Bush T-shirts. A great job and praise too for the ACLU on this one.....Michelle

Secret White House Manual: How to Stop Anti-Bush T-Shirts
August 17, 2007 12:16 PM

Justin Rood Reports:

The Bush administration has agreed to pay $80,000 to a husband and wife who were ejected from a presidential rally because of their anti-Bush T-shirts.

The settlement ends a suit brought by a Texas couple and the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming the couple's First Amendment rights were violated when they were arrested and removed from a taxpayer-funded event featuring President Bush because their shirts read "Love America, Hate Bush" and "Regime Change Starts at Home."

Jeffery and Nicole Rank refused directions from event staff and law enforcement to cover up their shirts at a July 4, 2004, West Virginia rally featuring President Bush. The pair were arrested, detained and charged with trespassing. The charges were later dismissed.

The settlement, in which the government admitted no wrongdoing, came after the disclosure of an allegedly "sensitive" Presidential Advance Manual, which laid out the White House's meticulous efforts to protect the president and his public image from dissent.

"As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event," the manual instructs. The government turned over a heavily redacted version of the manual to the ACLU in the course of the lawsuit.

The first step to keeping demonstrators out of events, the manual tells the president's event staff, is to encourage the Secret Service to "ask the local police department to designate a protest area...preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route."

Inside the event space, the manual advises, White House advance personnel should preposition "rally squads" that can swarm any protesters at the event and "use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform."

The rally squads can be formed using "college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities," the manual notes.

The squads can "lead supportive chants to drown out the protesters (USA!, USA!, USA!)," it suggests.


In a 2004 investigation, ABC News found such tactics were apparently used by the Democratic Kerry presidential campaign as well. In that investigation, ABC News producers wore T-shirts featuring the opposing candidate to campaign-sponsored rallies. Bush aides instructed producers to leave the presidential re-election rally; at a Kerry rally, they were surrounded and followed by a team of dancing Democratic campaign workers with large signs.

The manual is stamped "SENSITIVE – DO NOT COPY." Its cover warns readers that "it is a violation of Federal law to duplicate or reproduce this manual without permission. It is not to be photocopied or released to anyone outside of the Executive Office of the President, White House Military Office or United States Secret Service." It is currently posted on the ACLU's Web site, and available here:
www.aclu.org/pdfs/freespeech/presidential_advance_manual.pdf

Source:
blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/08/secret-white-ho.html

[michelle]

Specific suggestion:
General strike

I love this article! Garret Keizer does a fine job of poking US citizens where it hurts....on their inability/unwillingness to unite and act decisively and effectively in response to Congress's refusal to impeach Bush/Cheney. He also admonishes us with the following: "As long as we’re willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup." To rub it in even further, Keizer suggests that maybe we're addicted to the Bush regime by now, it makes great copy for journalists and would be writers...ouch! But I agree with him on that one: I too wonder what many bloggers would feel if justice was done and the cancer of our government was removed....What would one do without much to scream about? I for one would like to quit posting here...stop attempting to encourage people to take action or to even think about their government and get back to my life and interests. But Keizer doesn't stop there; he pushes us further with a suggestion, a plan of action to take...and I love him and his article for that. So read on folks, and after you've read the following, why don't you pass it on because the revolution starts in your own backyard!
Michelle

Specific suggestion:
General strike
BY Garret Keizer
PUBLISHED October 2007

Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust.
—Isaiah 26:19

1.Of all the various depredations of the Bush regime, none has been so thorough as its plundering of hope. Iraq will recover sooner. What was supposed to have been the crux of our foreign policy—a shock-and-awe tutorial on the utter futility of any opposition to the whims of American power—has achieved its greatest and perhaps its only lasting success in the American soul. You will want to cite the exceptions, the lunch-hour protests against the war, the dinner-party ejaculations of dissent, though you might also want to ask what substantive difference they bear to grousing about the weather or even to raging against the dying of the light—that is, to any ritualized complaint against forces universally acknowledged as unalterable. Bush is no longer the name of a president so much as the abbreviation of a proverb, something between Murphy’s Law and tomorrow’s fatal inducement to drink and be merry today.

If someone were to suggest, for example, that we begin a general strike on Election Day, November 6, 2007, for the sole purpose of removing this regime from power, how readily and with what well-practiced assurance would you find yourself producing the words “It won’t do any good”? Plausible and even courageous in the mouth of a patient who knows he’s going to die, the sentiment fits equally well in the heart of a citizen-ry that believes it is already dead.

2.Any strike, whether it happens in a factory, a nation, or a marriage, amounts to a reaffirmation of consent. The strikers remind their overlords—and, equally important, themselves—that the seemingly perpetual machinery of daily life has an off switch as well as an on. Camus said that the one serious question of philosophy is whether or not to commit suicide; the one serious question of political philosophy is whether or not to get out of bed. Silly as it may have seemed at the time, John and Yoko’s famous stunt was based on a profound observation. Instant karma is not so instant—we ratify it day by day.

The stream of commuters heading into the city, the caravan of tractor-trailers pulling out of the rest stop into the dawn’s early light, speak a deep-throated Yes to the sum total of what’s going on in our collective life. The poet Richard Wilbur writes of the “ripped mouse” that “cries Concordance” in the talons of the owl; we too cry our daily assent in the grip of the prevailing order— except in those notable instances when, like a donkey or a Buddha, we refuse to budge.

The question we need to ask ourselves at this moment is what further provocations we require to justify digging in our heels. To put the question more pointedly: Are we willing to wait until the next presidential election, or for some interim congressional conversion experience, knowing that if we do wait, hundreds of our sons and daughters will be needlessly destroyed? Another poet, César Vallejo, framed the question like this:

A man shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood.
Will it ever be fitting to allude to my inner soul? . . .
A cripple sleeps with one foot on his shoulder.
Shall I later on talk about Picasso, of all people?

A young man goes to Walter Reed without a face. Shall I make an appointment with my barber? A female prisoner is sodomized at Abu Ghraib. Shall I send a check to the Clinton campaign?

3.You will recall that a major theme of the Bush Administration’s response to September 11 was that life should go on as usual. We should keep saying that broad consensual Yes as loudly as we dared. We could best express our patriotism by hitting the malls, by booking a flight to Disney World. At the time, the advice seemed prudent enough: avoid hysteria; defy the intimidations of murderers and fanatics.

In hindsight it’s hard not to see the roots of our predicament in the readiness with which we took that advice to heart. We did exactly as we were told, with a net result that is less an implicit defiance of terrorism than a tacit amen to the “war on terror,” including the war in Iraq. Granted, many of us have come to find both those wars unacceptable. But do we find them intolerable? Can you sleep? Yes, doctor, I can sleep. Can you work? Yes, doctor, I can work. Do you get out to the movies, enjoy a good restaurant? Actually, I have a reservation for tonight. Then I’d say you were doing okay, wouldn’t you? I’d say you were tolerating the treatment fairly well.

It is one thing to endure abuses and to carry on in spite of them. It is quite another thing to carry on to the point of abetting the abuse. We need to move the discussion of our nation’s health to the emergency room. We need to tell the doctors of the body politic that the treatment isn’t working—and that until it changes radically for the better, neither are we.

4.No one person, least of all a freelance writer, has the prerogative to call or set the date for a general strike. What do you guys do for a strike, sit on your overdue library books? Still, what day more fitting for a strike than the first Tuesday of November, the Feast of the Hanging Chads? What other day on the national calendar cries so loudly for rededication?

The only date that comes close is September 11. You have to do a bit of soul-searching to see it, but one result of the Bush presidency has been a loss of connection to those who perished that day. Unless they were members of our families, unless we were involved in their rescue, do we think of them? It’s too easy to say that time eases the grief—there’s more to it than that, more even than the natural tendency to shy away from brooding on disasters that might happen again. We avoid thinking of the September 11 victims because to think of them we have to think also of what we have allowed to happen in their names. Or, if we object openly to what has happened, we have to parry the insinuation that we’re unmoved by their loss.

It is time for us to make a public profession of faith that the people who went to work that morning, who caught the cabs and rode the elevators and later jumped to their deaths, were not on the whole people who would sanction extraordinary rendition, preemptive war, and the suspension of habeas corpus; that in their heels and suits they were at least as decent as any sneaker-shod person standing vigil outside a post office with a stop the war sign. That the government workers who died in the Pentagon were not by some strange congenital fluke more obtuse than the high-ranking officers who thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea from the get-go. That the passengers who rushed the hijackers on Flight 93 were not repeating the mantra “It won’t do any good” while scratching their heads and their asses in a happy-hour funk.

An Election Day general strike would set our remembrance of those people free from the sarcophagi of rhetoric and rationalization. It would be the political equivalent of raising them from the dead. It would be a clear if sadly delayed message of solidarity to those voters in Ohio and Florida who were pretty much told they could drop dead.

5.But how would it work? A curious question to ask given that not working is most of what it would entail. Not working until the president and the shadow president resigned or were impeached. Never mind what happens next. Rather, let our mandarins ask how this came to happen in the first place. Let them ask in shock and awe.

People who could not, for whatever reason, cease work could at least curtail consumption. In fact, that might prove the more effective action of the two. They could vacate the shopping malls. They could cancel their flights. With the aid of their Higher Power, they could turn off their cell phones. They could unplug their TVs.

The most successful general strike imaginable would require extraordinary measures simply to announce its success. It would require sound trucks going up and down the streets, Rupert Murdoch reduced to croaking through a bullhorn. Bonfires blazing on the hills. Bells tolling till they cracked. (Don’t we have one of those on display somewhere?)

Ironically, the segment of the population most unable to participate would be the troops stationed in the Middle East. Striking in their circumstances would amount to suicide. That distinction alone ought to suffice as a reason to strike, as a reminder of the unconscionable underside of our “normal” existence. We get on with our lives, they get on with their deaths.

As for how the strike would be publicized and organized, these would depend on the willingness to strike itself. The greater the willingness, the fewer the logistical requirements. How many Americans does it take to change a lightbulb? How many Web postings, how many emblazoned bedsheets hung from the upper-story windows? Think of it this way: How many hours does it take to learn the results of last night’s American Idol, even when you don’t want to know?

In 1943 the Danes managed to save 7,200 of their 7,800 Jewish neighbors from the Gestapo. They had no blogs, no television, no text messaging—and very little time to prepare. They passed their apartment keys to the hunted on the streets. They formed convoys to the coast. An ambulance driver set out with a phone book, stopping at any address with a Jewish-sounding name. No GPS for directions. No excuse not to try.

But what if it failed? What if the general strike proved to be anything but general? I thought Bush was supposed to be the one afraid of science. Hypothesis, experiment, analysis, conclusion—are they his hobgoblins or ours? What do we have to fear, except additional evidence that George W. Bush is exactly what he appears to be: the president few of us like and most of us deserve. But science dares to test the obvious. So let us dare.

6.We could hardly be accused of innovation. General strikes have a long and venerable history. They’re as retro as the Bill of Rights. There was one in Great Britain in 1926, in France in 1968, in Ukraine in 2004, in Guinea just this year. Finns do it, Nepalis do it, even people without email do it . . .

But we don’t have to do it, you will say, because “we have a process.” Have or had, the verb remains tentative. In regard to verbs, Dick Cheney showed his superlative talent for le mot juste when in the halls of the U.S. Congress he told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. He has since told congressional investigators to do the same thing. There’s your process. Dick Cheney could lie every day of his life for all the years of Methuselah, and for the sake of that one remark history would still need to remember him as an honest man. In the next world, Diogenes will kneel down before him. In this world, though, and in spite of the invitation tendered to me through my senator, I choose to remain on my feet.

“United we stand,” isn’t that how it goes? But we are not united, not by a long shot. At this juncture we may be able to unite only in what we will not stand for. The justification of torture, the violation of our privacy, the betrayal of our intelligence operatives, the bankrupting of our commonwealth, the besmirching of our country’s name, the feckless response to natural disaster, the dictatorial inflation of executive power, the senseless butchery of our youth—if these do not constitute a common ground for intolerance, what does?

People were indignant at the findings of the 9/11 Commission—it seems there were compelling reasons to believe an attack was imminent!—yet for the attack on our Constitution we have evidence even more compelling. How can we criticize an administration for failing to act in the face of a probable threat given our own refusal to act in the face of a threat already fulfilled? As long as we’re willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup. As long as we’re willing to continue fucking ourselves, why should they have any scruples about telling us to smile during the act?

7.Between undertaking the strike and achieving its objective, the latter requires the greater courage. It requires courage simply to admit that this is so. For too many of us, Bush has become a secret craving, an addiction. We loathe Bush the way that Peter Pan loathed Captain Hook; he’s a villain, to be sure, but he’s half the fun of living in Never-Never Land. He has provided us with an inexhaustible supply of editorial copy, partisan rectitude, and every sort of lame excuse for not engaging the system he represents. In that sense, asking “What if the strike were to fail?” is not even honest. On some level we would want it to fail.

Certainly this would be true of those who’ve declared themselves as presidential candidates and for whom the Bush legacy represents an unprecedented windfall of political capital. One need only speak a coherent sentence—one need only breathe from a differently shaped smirk—to seem like a savior. Ding-dong, the Witch is dead. Already I can see the winged monkeys who signed off on the Patriot Act and the Iraq invasion jumping up and down for joy. Already I can hear the nauseating gush: “Such a welcome relief after Bush!” Relief, yes. But relief is not hope.

How much better if we could say to our next administration: Don’t talk about Bush. We dealt with Bush. We dealt with Bush and in so doing we demonstrated our ability to deal with you. You have a mandate more rigorous than looking good beside Bush. You need a program more ambitious than “uniting the country.” We are united—at least we were, if only for a while, if only in our disgust. If only I believed all this would happen.

I wrote this appeal during the days leading up to the Fourth of July. I wrote it because for the past six and a half years I have heard the people I love best—family members, friends, former students and parishioners—saying, “I’m sick over what’s happening to our country, but I just don’t know what to do.” Might I be pardoned if, fearing civil disorder less than I fear civil despair, I said, “Well, we could do this.” It has been done before and we could do this. And I do believe we could. If anyone has a better idea, I’m keen to hear it. Only don’t tell me what some presidential hopeful ought to do someday. Tell me what the people who have nearly lost their hope can do right now.

Source: harpers.org/archive/2007/10/0081720

ATTENTION REBELS! See:
airdance.proboards50.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=image&thread=1164083602&page=1#1193379300

[michelle]

Ending the war begins with you!
Every person who pays federal taxes in the United States contributes to the war machine. This year, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee is reaching out to average citizens to encourage them to join ranks of war tax resisters. War tax resistance doesn't mean you don't pay your federal taxes, it simply means that the money is redirected into campaigns or projects that you feel government services should be focusing on.....Michelle

An appeal to A People’s Campaign to Defund the War

Over the past year, peace activists have voted, lobbied, marched, and taken direct action to end the war in Iraq. Courageous soldiers have refused to fight the war. But Congress has appropriated billions of dollars to continue the war and appears ready to authorize a future military attack on Iran. It’s time for taxpayers who oppose this war to join together in nonviolent civil disobedience and show Congress how to cut off the funds for this war and redirect resources to the pressing needs of people.

Register and Prepare for April 2008
This fall, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee urges all who oppose this war to register and prepare for an April 2008 nationwide boycott and redirection of the federal income taxes that fuel the war in Iraq. Among the groups promoting this action are Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters League, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Veterans for Peace, and the Nonviolent Direct Action Working Group of United for Peace and Justice.

Building From Fall Direct Actions
This campaign to boycott and redirect war taxes launches in September as Congress considers an additional $142 billion dollar appropriation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Opponents of war and oppression are encouraged to refuse to pay for the war and occupation they are trying so hard to stop. The campaign will be promoted across the U.S. among the participants of upcoming actions challenging the Iraq war. These include “Days of Decision” actions, congressional office occupations, the “No War, No Warming” action, the October 27 Nationwide Mobilization to End the War, and the November vigil at the Army School of the Americas.

Redirection Projects
War tax boycott participants are encouraged to redirect their resisted taxes to a project providing health care among Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria, a health care center in New Orleans providing care to survivors of Katrina, or to a humanitarian project of their own choosing.

“If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

Henry David Thoreau
during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48

Join the 2008 War Tax Boycott and Redirection by submitting the online Registration Form or download the form here and mail it in.

The Getting Started in War Tax Resistance guide will help you prepare to refuse to pay for war, to understand the consequences, and to redirect your war taxes in 2008.
2008 War Tax Boycott is sponsored by National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee and endorsed by Voices for Creative Nonviolence, War Resisters League, the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, and the Nonviolent Direct Action Working Group of United for Peace and Justice.

Go To:
www.nwtrcc.org/wartaxboycott/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
History of War Tax Resistance

Refusing to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied for warfare.

Up until World War II, war tax resistance in the U.S. primarily manifested itself among members of the historic peace churches — Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren — and usually only during times of war. There has been instances of people refusing to pay taxes for war in virtually every American war, but it was not until World War II and the establishment of a permanent, centralized U.S. military (symbolized by the building of the Pentagon) was the modern war tax resistance movement born.

Colonial America
One of the earliest known instances of war tax refusal took place in 1637 when the relatively peaceable Algonquin Indians opposed taxation by the Dutch to help improve a local Dutch fort. Shortly after the Quakers arrived in America (1656) there were a number of individual instances of war tax resistance. In 1709 the Quaker Assembly refused a request of £4000 for an expedition into Canada, replying “it was contrary to their religious principles to hire men to kill one another.”

American Revolution
Most Quakers were opposed to taxes designated specifically for military purposes. Though the official position of the Society of Friends was against any payment of war taxes. Property was seized and auctioned, and many Quakers were jailed for their war tax resistance. A number of Quakers even refused the “mixed taxes.” Up to 500 Quakers were disowned for paying war taxes or joining the army.

Following the war many Quakers continued to refuse because these taxes were being used to pay the war debt, and therefore were essentially war taxes.

Mexican War
The Quakers reacted strongly to this war because of its aggressive nature and the threatened spread of slavery posed by the war. Many, again, refused to pay war taxes. However, the most famous instance of war tax resistance was that of Henry David Thoreau. Although not a pacifist he was opposed to slavery, and the imperialist and unjust nature of the war. His refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax levied for the war resulted in a night in jail. This whole experience was recorded in his essay, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” which has had a profound influence on many people since.

World War II
Until World War II the individual income tax was a minor part of the federal government receipts (affecting no more than 3 percent of the population). However with the introduction of the employee withholding tax in 1943, for the first time a large percentage of the population was subject to the income tax. The unprecedented amount of money being raised and spent for World War II suddenly touched the consciousness of many pacifists, who up until the war were not required to pay taxes.

In 1942 Ernest Bromley refused payment of $7.09 for a “defense tax stamp” required for all cars, and thus became the first known war tax resister in the modern era. He was arrested and eventually jailed for 60 days. Though Bromley and a few other pacifists did not pay income taxes during World War II, but there was no movement of war tax refusal.

Post-World War II
In April of 1948 a conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity” was held in Chicago, attended by over 300 people. The Call to the Conference (signed by A.J. Muste, Dave Dellinger, Harrop Freeman, George Houser, Dwight Macdonald, Ernest Bromley, and Marion Bromley, among others) expressed a need for a more revolutionary pacifist program and action techniques. Out of this conference grew a new organization, calling itself the Peacemakers. Their newsletter was titled Peacemaker. About forty people who attended the conference stated their intention to refuse part or all of their federal income taxes, forming a Tax Refusal Committee.

This Committee began almost immediately to publish news bulletins, independent of the Peacemaker. The bulletins were instrumental in engendering concern and giving information on tax refusal. War tax refusal succeeded in achieving nationwide publicity in 1949 with the issue of a Peacemaker press release titled “Forty-one Refuse to Pay Income Tax.” For almost twenty years Peacemakers was virtually the only consistent source of information and support for war tax resisters. The Catholic Worker, the Progressive, Fellowship, and a few other movement newsletters and magazines, would occasionally print sympathetic articles on war tax resistance.

Following World War II and up to the start of the Vietnam War only six people were imprisoned for war tax resistance related issues: James Otsuka, Maurice McCrackin, Juanita Nelson, Eroseanna Robinson, Walter Gormly, and Arthur Evans. All had been found in contempt of court for refusing to cooperate in one way or another with the proceedings.

In 1963 the Peacemakers published the first handbook on war tax resistance, appropriately titled Handbook on Nonpayment of War Taxes.

Indochina War
War tax resistance gained nationwide publicity when Joan Baez announced in 1964 her refusal to pay 60 percent of her 1963 income taxes because of the war in Vietnam. In 1965 the Peacemakers formed the “No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee,” obtaining signers to the pledge “I am not going to pay taxes on 1964 income.” By 1967 about 500 people had signed the pledge.

Then several events in the mid- to late-1960s occurred making this a pivotal period for the war resistance movement, signaling a shift in war tax resistance from a couple hundred to eventually tens of thousands of refusers.

A committee led by A.J. Muste obtained 370 signatures (including Joan Baez, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Noam Chomsky, Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, publisher Lyle Stuart, and Staughton Lynd) for an ad in The Washington Post, which proclaimed their intention not to pay all or part of their 1965 income taxes.

A suggestion in 1966 to form a mass movement around the refusal to pay the (at that time) 10 percent telephone tax was given an initial boost by Chicago tax resister Karl Meyer. This was followed by War Resisters League developing a national campaign in the late 1960s to encourage refusal to pay the telephone tax.

In 1967, Gerald Walker of The New York Times Magazine began the organizing of Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. The 528 writers and editors (including Gloria Steinem and Kirkpatrick Sale) pledged themselves to refuse the 10 percent war surtax (which had just been added to income taxes) and possibly the 23 percent of their income tax allocated for the war. Most daily newspapers refused to sell space for the ad. Only the New York Post (at that time, a liberal newspaper), Ramparts (a popular left-wing anti-war magazine), and the New York Review of Books carried it.

Ken Knudson, in a 1965 letter to the Peacemaker, suggested that inflating the W-4 form would stop withholding. Again, Karl Meyer was instrumental in promoting this idea, which was adopted by Peacemakers, Catholic Worker, and War Resisters League, among other organizations in the late 1960s. Inflating W-4 forms also brought a new wave of indictments and jailings by the government — 16 were indicted for claiming too many dependents; of those, six were actually jailed.

The number of known income tax resisters grew from 275 in 1966 to an estimated 20,000 in the early 1970s. The number of telephone tax resisters was estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Many groups were formed around the country including “people’s life funds,” to which people sent their war tax resisted money to fund community programs.

The popularity of war tax resistance grew to such an extent that the WRL could no longer handle the volume of requests. So in 1969 a press conference was held in New York City to announce the founding of the National War Tax Resistance (WTR). Long-time peace activist Bradford Lyttle was the first coordinator. Local WTR chapters blossomed around the country, and by 1972 there were 192 such groups. WTR published a comprehensive handbook on tax resistance, Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More (edited by Robert Calvert), and put out a monthly newsletter, Tax Talk. Radical members of the historic peace churches began to urge their constituencies to refuse war taxes.

In 1972 Congressman Ronald Dellums (CA) introduced the World Peace Tax Fund Act in Congress, which was designed to create a conscientious objector status for taxpayers. The National Council for a World Peace Tax Fund was formed to promote this legislation (later changed to National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund). The bill has been introduced into each Congress since.

During the Indochina War, war tax resistance gained its greatest strength ever in the history of the United States, and on a secular basis rather than as a result of the historic peace churches, who played a very minor role this time. The government did its best to stop this increase in tax resistance, but was hamstrung by telephone tax resisters. There were so many resisters and so little tax owed per person that the IRS lost money every time they made a collection. The cost of bank levies, garnished wages, automobile and property seizures, and even the simplest IRS paperwork was simply too expensive to be worth it.

The Reagan Military Escalation
National WTR folded in 1975 with the end of the Indochina War. By 1977 war tax resistance dropped to about 20,000 telephone tax resisters and a few thousand income tax resisters. Then in 1978 some radical members of the three historic peace churches got together to issue a “New Call to Peacemaking” that suggested war tax resistance as one way to oppose the arms race. The Center on Law and Pacifism was formed in 1978 to assist these and other war tax resistance efforts, issuing the book People Pay for Peace (by William Durland) in 1979.

With the election of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 and his call to rearm the U.S., many more people began to resist war taxes. The IRS admitted the number of war tax resisters tripled between 1978 and 1981. Like Joan Baez’s tax refusal announcement seventeen years before, a national stir was created in 1981 when Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle urged citizens to refuse to pay 50 percent of their income taxes to protest spending on nuclear weapons. Letters of endorsement of his stand were made by other religious leaders in Seattle and elsewhere around the country.

In 1982 the War Resisters League published the first edition of The Guide to War Tax Resistance, which sought to provide a broad and comprehensive source of information incorporating the out-of-print Ain’t Gonna Pay for War No More, Peacemakers’ Handbook on the Nonpayment of War Taxes, as well as new material not included in either book. A fifth edition of the book came out in 2003. About the same time, WRL began producing its annual “tax piechart” street flyer, which analyzed the spending of the Federal government while promoting protests to military spending.

This renewed interest in war tax resistance, spurred on by the unprecedented increase in military spending during peacetime, stimulated an escalated response by the government. Though there have been only three criminal prosecutions of war tax resisters since 1980, the IRS shifted tactics and began seizing property. In 1984 and 1985 after almost ten years of very few seizures, about a half dozen automobiles and a similar number of houses were seized from war tax resisters. Furthermore, in 1982 the government came up with a new civil penalty which was specifically aimed at war tax resisters. Called the “frivolous” fine, it charged a $500 penalty against anyone who altered their 1040 forms (e.g., by claiming a war tax deduction).

In an effort to coordinate the growing interest in war tax resistance, a National Action Conference was called by WRL and the Center on Law and Pacifism in 1982. Out of this conference the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) was formed. Every spring NWTRCC has issued press releases announcing Tax Day actions around the country. In addition to a bimonthly newsletter with the latest war tax resistance news, NWTRCC has issued several brochures, produced a slide show, and published the War Tax Manual for Counselors and Lawyers.

The End of the “Cold War”
In 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the collapse of the former Soviet bloc, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cold War ended. War tax resisters and others expected a major reduction in the U.S. military and looked for ways to work in coalition with groups calling for a “peace dividend.” However, a little more than a year later, George Bush sent U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf region, and war tax resistance groups were flooded with calls from people saying that they’d “had enough!”

Also in 1989, the IRS seized and auctioned the Colrain, MA, home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner; shortly thereafter, the home of resisters Bob Bady and Pat Morse, neighbors of Kehler-Corner, was also seized and auctioned. Within hours, a support committee was formed. Significant articles appeared in newspapers across the country. After their eviction in 1991, the house was occupied by a rotating collection of affinity groups until 1992, when the new owners forced their way in. A continuous vigil outside lasted until the fall of 1993. Throughout this entire period, considerable publicity, actions, and support were generated bringing a lot of attention to war tax resistance, U.S. military spending, and the misplaced priorities of the government. Four years later “An Act of Conscience,” a 90-minute film about the struggle, was finished.

Meanwhile, from 1990 to 1993 the Alternative Revenue Service (ARS) was developed by the WRL and co-sponsored by NWTRCC and the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign. It grew out of a desire, shared by many war tax resisters, to have a nationally organized campaign that would reach out to new communities in a creative way, suggesting that even a token level of tax resistance is a valuable protest. During the 1990-1991 tax season, 70,000 EZ Peace forms – a parody of the IRS’s 1040EZ form – were circulated. About 500 forms were returned and over $105,000 in resisted taxes were redirected to alternative funds and other groups. By 1993, a decline in interest, made that the last season for the ARS.

Numerous well-publicized cases of IRS abuse led to Congressional hearings in 1997 and 1998, and resulted in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. Among the changes, were some reductions in interest and penalties, some restrictions on levies and seizures, reorganizing the IRS away from a geographical structure to one that concentrates on types of taxpayers (individuals, small businesses and the self-employed, corporations, and tax-exempt groups), and a number of more cosmetic (as far as war tax resisters are concerned) changes. The IRS also cut back on the number of collection agents, liens, levies, and seizures of property

In 1993 Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in an attempt to accommodate individual conscience in instances where a person’s religious beliefs may be adversely affected by the government. In the late 1990s three court cases were filed by Quaker war tax resisters using RFRA and the First Amendment guarantee to the free exercise of religion in an attempt to have penalties against war tax resisters removed and permit them to pay only for non-military programs. These cases were dismissed in lower courts, appealed, then dismissed again in the Second and Third Circuit Courts. In 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear any of the appeals.

The “War on Terrorism” (2001-?)
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush began bombing Afghanistan and sent in ground troops to topple the ruling Taliban regime in the name of fighting terrorism. U.S. special forces were also deployed around the world to countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colombia.

In March 2003, the U.S. launched an all-out war against Iraq, a country no proven role in the September 11th attacks. Adding to the tension, North Korea has said it plans to resume its nuclear program. Historically, the level of activity of the war tax resistance movement, as with that of the peace movement in general, rises and falls with national and international events. It is too early to tell what the effect this new war will have on war tax resistance. If the “war on terrorism” lasts a long time – as the President Bush has promised – then there is sure to be an enormous growth in the peace movement with a major resurgence in war tax resistance.

For more information on the history wtr, See the War Resisters League’s War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military .

Source: www.warresisters.org/history_wtr.htm
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HOW LONG
by Jackson Browne

When you look into a child's face
And you're seeing the human race
And the endless possibilities there
Where so much can come true
And you think of the beautiful things
A child can do
How long -- would the child survive
How long -- if it was up to you

When you think about the money spent
On defense by a government
And the weapons of destruction we've built
We're so sure that we need
And you think of the millions and millions
That money could feed
How long -- can you hear someone crying
How long -- can you hear someone dying
Before you ask yourself why?

And how long will we hear people speaking
About missiles for peace
And just let it go by
How long will they tell us these weapons
Are keeping us free
That's a lie
If you saw it from a satellite
With its green and its blue and white
The beauty of the curve of the earth
And its oceans below
You might think it was paradise
If you didn't know
You might think that it's turning
But it's turning so slow

How long -- can you hear someone crying
How long -- can you hear someone dying
Before you ask yourself why?
And how long will it be 'till we've turned
To the tasks and the skills
That we'll have to have learned
If we're going to find our place in the future
And have something to offer
Where this planet's concerned
How long?

[michelle]

If Conservatism Is The Ideology of Freedom
I'm The Queen of England

Here, David Michael Green gives a lengthy list of how the conservatives have undermined our ideology of freedom from the American Revolution and the conception of our great experiment, The United States of America, to current times with their twisted LIES. It is my wish that the following gets you hoppin' mad. And if you're already hep to the following, please feel free to forward the following to any who are, somehow, still in denial.
For the more adventureous in their reading may I suggest reading the following. I have stated many times, here and at Anwaar's TruthSpring, that those who make decisions regarding lives around the globe are not human in the real sense of the word....soon, you will understand how true this is. Pay attention when you get to Part 5 about Humanoid behavior:
Al Gore and the Monolithic and Ruthless Conspiracy begin here: tinyurl.com/2mceul after you read the following....Michelle

If Conservatism Is The Ideology of Freedom
I'm The Queen of England

I wish I had a nickel for every time a conservative told a lie in order to sell an ideology that would otherwise be hopelessly unappealing.

But, then, what the hell would I do with ten kazillion, trillion, dollars? I wouldn’t know how to spend that much loot.

These lies are legend, and they’re endlessly retold. Everything from the one about the liberal bias in the media, or the one about Ronald Reagan ending the Cold War, to the one about how the private sector is so much more efficient than the government. And how about Saddam’s arsenal of WMD, eh? Or the tax cuts that weren’t going to drive the federal government into deficit? Or remember when George Bush told us that the war in Iraq was over, before it had even really started? Or the bit about how global warming is just a great big conspiracy among those noted well-known cabalists, er ... climatology scientists?

I’m only just getting started here, but you get the point. If you’re a conservative you basically have two choices – lie or lose. ‘Cause if you tell the truth, no one in his or her right mind would buy the garbage you’re peddling.

The list of lies is endless, but my personal favorite is the one about how conservatism is the ideology of freedom, and specifically freedom from an overweening, intrusive, liberty-stealing, nanny-state government.

Sometimes when I hear that howler, I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not off in some virtual reality world (like ‘Liberty’ University, or the Republican national convention) somewhere. Because, clearly, between me and the well-programmed fool mouthing these hopeless inanities, one of us is, that’s for sure.

But I’ll tell you what, if conservatism is the ideology of freedom – then I’m the Queen of England. And, one thing you can be sure of is that I’m not the Queen of England. I don’t even have the right parts and pieces, and the only crown I’ve ever worn was given to me forty years ago by some pimply-faced teenager working the cash register at Burger King. Somehow, I don’t think that counts.

Meanwhile, here’s what I’d like to know:

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who fought against the American Revolution?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to take that freedom away from us, especially women and minorities? Why did they fight against the effort to end slavery, or to give women and minorities the vote, or to protect them from discrimination? Why are they still supporting efforts to disenfranchise minorities?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who bitterly opposed the New Deal at a time when Americans were ravaged by the Great Depression and the only freedom they were desperately seeking was from unemployment, starvation, humiliation and death? We should give thanks for their efforts ever since then, though, as they’ve been kind enough to keep trying to liberate seniors from the hell of receiving their Social Security benefits, bravely volunteering Wall Street to carry that burden instead.

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always propping up foreign dictators, like Saddam, Musharraf, Mubarak, Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah, Batista, the House of Saud and apartheid South Africa? Why did they, in some of these cases, secretly topple democratically elected governments to install repressive regimes, which they then assisted in the torturing of their own citizens? Exactly which definition of ‘freedom’ does that fall under?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to control other people’s sexuality? Why are conservatives always telling us whom we can sleep with and what we can do in bed, even including whether we can use birth control?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to make sure that the state takes control of women’s bodies, denying them reproductive choice and freedom?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to tell us who we can marry? How come they believe that the state – which they always seem to hate, except when it is at war – should be able to make that most personal decision for us?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always blocking the environmental regulations which are the only hope to keep our bodies free from carcinogens and other harmful effects?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who refuse to allow us to use medical marijuana when we are suffering the effects of chemotherapy, and even perhaps at risk of dying from the wasting it causes?

Indeed, if conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are limiting the freedom of individuals to use drugs of any sort? If people want to use these substances and can do so without harming others, why do conservatives insist on restricting that freedom?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who refuse to allow us to die with dignity when we have a terminal disease, instead thrusting the state into the most personal and private decision a human being can make?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who passed an act of Congress intervening in the personal family tragedy of Terri Schiavo, with the president of the United States – the same one who couldn’t be bothered to come off vacation to deal with the 9/11 threat or the Katrina disaster – flying across the country to sign it?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are denying many of us the freedom to live by forbidding the stem-cell research that would likely produce cures to all manner of diseases now killing of millions of us every year?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are loading up our children with mountains of debt that the federal government has borrowed under the stewardship of such notorious liberals as Ronald Reagan (who quadrupled the national debt) and George W. Bush (who borrowed more money from foreign governments than all 42 of his predecessors, combined)? Right now, every eighteen year-old just starting a payroll job owes $60,000, and rising, plus interest, as their share of the nine trillion dollars conservatives have been especially instrumental in running up as national debt. What kind of freedom, exactly, does that represent? Assuming (quite ‘conservatively’) that that number rises to $100,000 before it is paid off, and that our young friend earns ten bucks an hour, it is the freedom to work five solid years, bringing home zero dollars after taxes, to do nothing whatsoever but paying off his share of the conservative binge.

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who have taken the very lives of four thousand of our soldiers for a war based completely on lies? This same war has left tens of thousands of Americans gravely wounded, likely more than a million Iraqi civilians dead, and well over four million more Iraqis as refugees from the violence. What kind of freedom is this? The freedom from having to be alive and well? The freedom to serve three and four rotations of extended tours in the hell of Iraq, keeping our military personnel safe from their nagging mothers-in-law at home?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are so anxious to take away our civil liberties, the most important of American freedoms, as enshrined in one of the greatest statements of freedom ever, the Bill of Rights? What happened to habeas corpus – a freedom dating back almost a thousand years – or the right to an attorney, or to have a trial, or to be protected from search and seizure without a judicially-issued warrant based on probable cause, or protection from torture? What happened to all those freedoms? What happened is that conservatives came to town and erased them.

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to have the government jam their religion down our throats, in direct opposition to the intentions of the Founders? The United States Constitution makes precisely the same number of references to the Christian god as it does to the Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Zoroastrian. That would be none. What kind of freedom is it for everyone’s tax dollars to support one group’s religion, or for our government to impose a single religion on all of us?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always telling me I should leave the country if I don’t approve the latest war for lies they’ve cooked up? How exactly does ‘shut-up or leave’ qualify as freedom of speech?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are constantly attempting to turn the executive branch of the federal government into a monarchy? By using signing statements, endless claims of executive privilege, lack of congressional oversight when they controlled Congress, thwarted oversight when they didn’t, and unprecedented levels of secrecy, they have shredded the fundamental doctrine of separated powers checking and balancing against each other. Since those ideas – the most basic concept of the Constitution – are intended to keep us safe from governments that would steal our liberties, just how is it that conservatism is the ideology of freedom?

Any one of these inconvenient truths, let alone the sum of all of them, demonstrate the absurdity of this claim. Not only is it ridiculous to call a conservatism that at every turn seeks to limit you – in what you can say, what you can ingest, who you can sleep with, marry, and even when you can end your own life – the ideology of freedom, but the only real conclusion that one can honestly come to on the basis of this historical record is of course just the opposite: Conservatism is, and has almost always been, the ideology of oppression – the very opposite of freedom.

When Americans wanted liberty from the British crown, conservative Tories not only in Britain but here as well fought to block that freedom. When ‘radicals’ sought to emancipate the slaves, conservatives fought to keep them in chains. When progressives later sought equality for women and blacks, it was conservatives who stood in the doorways blocking entrance. And, today, as we seek justice and fairness for all people regardless of their sexual orientation, it is – wait for it, now – the conservative movement which not only resists that effort at every turn, but in fact shamefully turns their homophobia into a tool used to win elections, just as they have been doing with racism for forty years now.

Indeed, you have to be more or less deaf, dumb and blind – or perhaps simply watching Fox every night for your ‘news’ (which produces the same result) – to buy into this rhetoric from the theater of the absurd. Let me reiterate: If you think these monsters who are depriving you of your liberties at every opportunity represent freedom, then you need to bow, scrape and walk backwards in my presence, as a sign of respect for the British crown. I’ll take a bunch of your money, too. Palaces aren’t cheap to maintain, buddy.

Yeah, sure, it’s true that conservatives will be right there for you if you want the freedom to buy guns and ammo, including ‘cop-killer’ bullets, assault rifles (to nail those most obstinate of pheasants, of course), or a fifty caliber rifle capable of bringing down a jumbo jet, and advertised as such in its sales literature. Of course, along with the freedom to buy these weapons (and how come, if the Second Amendment protects the bearing of “arms”, not ‘guns’, I can’t also legally buy cannons, napalm and tactical nuclear warheads – just in case the neighborhood gets a little rowdy?), also comes the lovely ‘freedom’ to join the 35,000 or so Americans every year who become very stiff corpses as a result of the massive proliferation of weapons in which America uniquely specializes. Perhaps you’d rather live in Europe, eh, enjoying being alive? Well, for the rest of you non-sissies out there, conservatives have made sure that you have the freedom to take your bullet along with you when you’re buried. What cheese-eating Frenchman ever had that freedom?

Conservatives are also busy making sure that there is plenty of freedom for corporations to pollute the land, water and air we depend on for survival. Regulation is bad, you see. Very bad. It’s much better to have freedom – including your freedom to get sick, or to live in a world careering toward global disaster – than it would be to impede on the freedom of the super-rich to make themselves super-duper-rich.

No need to worry too much about the health implications of global warming, arsenic or radioactive waste, though. Chances are you won’t live long enough to get killed this way, or to be shot by somebody whose freedom to own a gun has been well protected by nice right-wing people. That’s because conservatives are also on the front-lines in the lonely battle fighting to make sure that you have the opportunity to join the more than 47 million Americans free from having healthcare coverage, or the many tens of millions more whose policies are insufficient to keep them alive. Don’t you feel good knowing you’re free from the evils of ‘socialized’ medicine? Isn’t profit-driven corporate non-care so much better? Forget about “Give me liberty or give me death”. Now you can have both!

One thing you can’t argue about, however, is that it is conservatives who will keep your taxes down. Right? Well, yeah, if you mean this year. And if you mean nickels and dimes. But then, by applying the same logic, making your house payment on a credit card would be defined as keeping your monthly expenses down. (Of course, since you’re about to lose your house anyhow, as a result of conservative economics, that may be a moot point.) But there’s just these two little problems. One is that the nice people who loan you money invariably want to be paid back. And, two, they want interest on the loans as well. I don’t know who middle-class Americans dreamed would be paying for their meager tax cuts, which – along with massively increased government spending by those paragons of fiscal responsibility, you guessed it, conservatives – were funded by charging it all on the federal plastic, but you can bet America’s creditors know all our addresses. They’ll find us when the bill comes due.

Of course, this is only the beginning. What the tax cuts were really about was shifting the burden of funding government from the wealthy to the middle class, and from today’s generation to tomorrow’s. So, not only will middle class Americans, or their kids, have to pay back everything borrowed these last six years to fund their piddly little tax cuts, plus interest accrued, but they will also be paying for the massive tax cuts that were given to the massively wealthy.

Which, of course, is really what the whole elaborate kabuki dance of conservative ‘freedom’ was ever all about, from the beginning. As one of the greatest political marketing ploys of all time, it used pathetic middle class tax cuts plus supremely ironic restrictions on social and personal liberties to sell a bunch of frightened naifs on the notion that conservatism is the ideology of freedom, all so that the ubër-class could realize their dream kleptocracy in place of a government actually devoted to public service. And, remarkably, it worked – at least for a time.

Don’t you feel better now that you’re free after decades of Reagan, Gingrich, Bush, Cheney, DeLay and Scalia? You’re free to shut up with your unpopular ideas. You’re free from having to make difficult decisions when you’re pregnant. You’re free to be arrested for smoking a joint to keep from vomiting while you’re doing chemotherapy. You’re free from having to worry about which sex you’re going to sleep with or marry. You’re free from protection against guns or from long life in a healthy environment. And when you do get shot or sick, you’re free from adequate medical care. Moreover, should you find yourself stuck with a painful and terminal illness, you’re also free from either stem-cell remedies or your own choice to end your suffering and die with dignity.

You’re also free to fall through the tattered safety net of government programs during a recession or a depression, and you’ll likely be free from making those pesky house payments very much further into the future either. You’re free from wondering whether the rest of the world hates you and your country because it’s been undermining democracies, propping up dictators, and invading oil-rich countries on the basis of completely fabricated war rationales. You’re free from having to pay your taxes today. But you’ll also be free from buying those things you wanted tomorrow, as you’ll instead be paying today’s taxes, interest on those taxes, tomorrow’s taxes, plus the share that the wealthy used to pay.

So whattaya think? Ain’t conservative freedom great?

Next time you hear a conservative ranting about the wonder and joys of freedom, tell them: “Yeah, no kidding, freedom is a really good thing. You’d like it even better if you actually tried it out some time”.

Source: www.regressiveantidote.net/Articles/If_Conservatism_Is_The_Ideology_of_Freedom.html

url for this post: tinyurl.com/ynp5o7

[michelle]

Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status
Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S.West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DECEMBER 20, 2007
9:02 AM

CONTACT: Lakota Freedom
Naomi Archer, Communications Liaison
[phone]
[e-mail] or [e-mail]

WASHINGTON, DC - December 20 - Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.

"This is an historic day for our Lakota people," declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. "United States colonial rule is at its end!"

"Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit," shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. "They never honored the treaties, that's the reason we are here today."

The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.

"In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny," said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.

Young added, "The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people".

Following Monday's withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.

Lakota's efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are "very, very interested in the Lakota case" while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with "respect and solidarity."

"Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations," explained Garry Rowland. "As a nation, we have equal status within the national community."

Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. "Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty," said Means. "Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people."

The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average. 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.

"After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative," emphasized Duane Martin Sr. "The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway."

We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have traveled to Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.

Source: www.commondreams.org/news2007/1220-02.htm
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Russell Means Challenging 150 years of Broken Treaties

“I want to emphasize, we do not represent the collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America to ensure our poverty, to ensure the theft of our land and resources,” former Libertarian Party presidential hopeful Russell Means recently said.

Reason’s Jesse Walker points out that nearly everyone in the western world (at least those with Internet hookups) now knows who Ron Paul is. What Russell Means, Paul’s opponent in the 1988 race for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, is currently up to seems interesting, as well.

Means, now 68 years of age, has been a leading American Indian (Means dislikes the term Native American) freedom activist. He is credited with roles in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island, the takeover of Mount Rushmore, the takeover of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Washington, DC office, and the occupation of Wounded Knee.

He’s also had other American Indian roles, such as playing chief Chingachgook in Last of the Mohicans. His voice was used in Pocahontas, and he had roles in movies like Natural Born Killers and Into the West.

Recently, he’s been leading a movement to return Sioux lands to their native (and legal, as he would claim) inhabitants. Here’s how the AFP describes the movement:

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.


The Argus Leader reports:

Headed by leaders of the American Indian Movement, including activist, actor and Porcupine resident Russell Means, the group dropped in on the State Department and the embassies of Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and South Africa this week seeking recognition for their effort to form a free and independent Lakota nation. The group plans to visit more embassies in the coming months.

The new nation is needed because Indians have been “dismissed” by the United States and are tired of living under a colonial apartheid system, Means said during a news conference held at Plymouth Congregational Church in northeast Washington. He was accompanied by a bodyguard and three other Lakota activists – Gary Rowland, Duane Martin and Phyllis Young, all of South Dakota.

The story becomes increasingly interesting:

Members of the new nation would not pay any taxes, and leaders would be informally chosen by community elders, Means said. Non-Indians could continue to live in the new nation’s territory, which would consist of the western parts of North and South Dakota and Nebraska and eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. The new government would issue its own passports and drivers licenses, Means said.

“Our withdrawal (from the treaties) is fully thought out,” Means said, referring to peace treaties the Lakota people signed with the government in 1851 and 1868. “We were mandated by our elders in 1974 to do two things. First, to establish relationships with the international community… and the second mandate, of course, was to reestablish our independence.”

Bolivian Ambassador Gustavo Guzman, who attended the press conference out of solidarity, said he takes the Lakotas’ declaration of independence seriously.

“We are here because the demands of indigenous people of America are our demands,” Guzman said. “We have sent all the documents they presented to the embassy to our ministry of foreign affairs in Bolivia and they’ll analyze everything.”

While the “official” Lakota tribes have not broken away, it is important to note that Means was once deprived of a tribal leadership role in a case involving voting fraud. While Means lost the election, a court upheld that vote fraud had occurred and ordered a new election. According to Wikipedia, that election was never conducted and the court never enforced its own decision. The organization Means currently represents is called the Lakota Freedom Delegation.

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UPDATE: The Rapid City Journal reports the following additional information:

A group represents the Lakota Sioux Indian representatives from various reservations and states said Wednesday that it is declaring sovereign nation status and withdrawing from all treaties with the U.S. government. [...]

If the U.S. government does not immediately enter into diplomatic negotiations, the group said in a news release, liens will be filed on real-estate transactions across the region—an action it says could cloud title issues over thousands of square miles of land and property.

“In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny,” said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.

Source:
thirdpartywatch.com/2007/12/20/russell-means-challenging-150-years-of-broken-treaties/

[michelle]

Lakota Will Be Way Way Better Than Dakota

Well, the Lakota Indians have fucking had it. The people that brought us such leaders as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse announced today that they are withdrawing from their treaties with the US of A and are becoming an independent nation on account of all 33 of those treaties being totally ignored by the government they signed them with 150 years ago. Maybe it has something to do with the decades-worth of royalties on the oil extracted from their land the Dept. of the Interior refuses pay them. Just a wild guess.

In 2002, our good friend Judge Lamberth of the DC Federal District Court held then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt of court (just like her predecessor) in a whole not-paying-the-Indians- their-money suit, which is pretty much priceless, so I shall quote:

“U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Tuesday that Norton not only failed to comply with his order to account for the money in the Indian accounts but committed fraud by misrepresenting the department’s efforts to repair the trust and protect Indian money.
“‘In my 15 years on the bench, I have never seen a litigant make such a concerted effort to subvert the truth-seeking function of the judicial process,’ Lamberth wrote.

“‘The Department of Interior is truly an embarrassment to the federal government in general and the executive branch in particular.’”

The Lakota independence movement is over 30 years old but the Indian nation didn’t formally declare it’s independence until today because they wanted to make sure they all their “ducks in a row.” We can understand that.

Now they have a plan. The Lakota will issue their own passports and drivers licenses and stuff and residents won’t have to pay taxes so long as they renounce their US citizenship. Oh, and also, you have to live in South Dakota or whatever. That might sound boring but there may or may not be Casinos and defnitely plenty of booze. [To my friends, the Human Beings: sorry about this last comment from the author of this article. There is no intended mockery from me, just used it for points made and as a lead in to the next item.....Michelle]

Source: wonkette.com/336368/lakota-will-be-way-way-better-than-dakota
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Interior secretary held in contempt of court
Robert Gehrke
Chicago Sun-Times
Sep 18, 2002

WASHINGTON--Interior Secretary Gale Norton said she may appeal a judge's decision holding her in contempt of court for failing to fix her department's mismanagement of hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties from Indian land.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled Tuesday that Norton not only failed to comply with his order to account for the money in the Indian accounts but committed fraud by misrepresenting the department's efforts to repair the trust and protect Indian money.

"In my 15 years on the bench, I have never seen a litigant make such a concerted effort to subvert the truth-seeking function of the judicial process," Lamberth wrote.

"The Department of Interior is truly an embarrassment to the federal government in general and the executive branch in particular."

Norton said the ruling deals mostly with events that occurred before the Bush administration, and she has devoted more energy to fixing the management of Indian money than any other project.

Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation who led a group of Indians in suing the department in 1996 for squandering Indian money, praised Lamberth's ruling and said it should serve as a warning to Norton and her department.

"I prayed every day that this opinion would serve justice to the individual Indian beneficiaries, the ones who have been hurting for so long," Cobell said. "We are on the road to justice, and I'm happy for this opinion."

Norton is the third Cabinet officer that Lamberth has held in contempt over the trust fund. Former President Clinton's Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin were found in contempt in 1999.

The government acknowledges major problems with the trust fund.

The Interior Department has spent more than $600 million since 1996 to comply with instructions from both Congress and Lamberth, but accounting problems persist.

In December the judge shut down most of the Interior Department's Internet connections because he said the agency could not ensure hackers wouldn't break in and steal money.

During a 29-day trial that ended in late February, Norton asked Lamberth for more time to make fixes. Lamberth was unmoved.

Instead, he expanded the court's oversight of the trust reform efforts. He stopped short of stripping the department of its management responsibility and assigning it to an independent trust expert, although he said that remains an option.

He set a deadline of Jan. 6, 2003, for the department to submit plans for an accounting and overhaul of the trust fund and scheduled a trial for May 2003 to determine what other actions the court should take.

The trust handles royalties from 11 million acres for about 300,000 American Indians and began in 1887. AP

Source: findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20020918/ai_n12476982

[DT1]

Every state should follow their lead.
And Washington D.C be damned...

DAMMNED TO HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The experiment has totaly,utterly failed.
I was making half of my meager income "under the table" before I found out
about congress bending over,biting the pillow and passing G.W.Bushit's 70billion dollar war check.
Now there is no way that this disgusting,illegal,immoral genocide
will stop for at least(remember this phrase?)four more years.
Dems,repubs...A puppet-show in a burning house.
It's not like we needed the money here,or anything...
My terminally ill wife gets billed $10.000 for a bag of useless toxins from Tyco.
Our healthcare experience is a bit different than the Executive branch.
Our doctor thinks cannabis is crack.
They want her to recover from chemotherapy in a fucking hotel room.
Bill collectors from India-My phone rings off the hook.I don't bother answering anymore.
Fuck it-Broke is broke,right?
I just quit my"real job".
I am modifying my lifestyle and going underground.
I WILL NOT GIVE ONE MORE FUCKING DIME to the Federal Government.
Not one more bullet.
Not one more bomb.
Not one more Iraqi,Afghani,Palistinian child's blood on my hands for Cheney/Israel/Exxon/GeneralElectric/Northropgrumman/Rayteyon/Halliburton/Blackwater/Bush@.
Not one more moment wasted trying to change the system.
I give up on the American Dream.It's bullshit.
At this forum we have 121 members.
Nobody posts.
I guess they all fear getting their doors kicked in.
I guess people get the government they deserve.
I guess they don't realize that silence is death.
I'm over the apathy.I'm done.
This will most likely be my last post.
See you on the other side.

[michelle]

Vermont group wants Cheney, Bush charged with war crimes

Associated Press - December 28, 2007 7:05 PM ET

MONTPELIER, VT. - President Bush and Vice President Cheney may soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning Vermont: In one town, activists want them subject to arrest for war crimes.

A group in Brattleboro is petitioning to put an item on the Town Meeting agenda in March that would make Bush - who's been to every state except Vermont as president - and Vice President Cheney subject to arrest and indictment if they visit the southeastern Vermont town.

Fifty-4-year-old Kurt Daims, a retired machinist leading the charge, says the petition is as radical as the Declaration of Independence and draws on that tradition.

But it's unclear whether the group can get the one thousand signatures necessary to get the measure on the Town Meeting Day agenda.

State Attorney General William Sorrell says that even if passed, the measure would be of dubious legal value.

Source:
www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=7553751