Duty to Warn
Imagine for a minute that we are back in the Clinton
era. Someone breaks the story that a former male
prostitute using an alias and working for a phony
news organization has been allowed into the
White House every day without a full security
background check. This “reporter” got his start in
the prestigious White House press corps despite
having no prior journalistic experience and despite
being denied press credentials by the journalist-run
Congressional press office.
President Bush and members of Congress are on a relentless crusade to rid this country of junk lawsuits.
“We’re making progress toward a better legal system,” said President Bush after signing legislation limiting awards for medical malpractice cases. “There’s more to do…We have a responsibility to confront frivolous lawsuits head-on.”
To find lawsuits most frivolous of all, lawmakers need look no further than free trade deals. Yet, when it comes to free trade, the Bush Administration turns a blind-eye on legal reform.
Public Citizen recently published a report, NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases: Lessons for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which documents lawsuits filed by transnational corporations challenging local, state, and federal laws of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These challenges usually mean cash payments to these corporations, which comes out of taxpayers’ pockets.
Here are a few examples:
“We’re making progress toward a better legal system,” said President Bush after signing legislation limiting awards for medical malpractice cases. “There’s more to do…We have a responsibility to confront frivolous lawsuits head-on.”
To find lawsuits most frivolous of all, lawmakers need look no further than free trade deals. Yet, when it comes to free trade, the Bush Administration turns a blind-eye on legal reform.
Public Citizen recently published a report, NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Cases: Lessons for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which documents lawsuits filed by transnational corporations challenging local, state, and federal laws of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. These challenges usually mean cash payments to these corporations, which comes out of taxpayers’ pockets.
Here are a few examples:
How does one eulogize their hero? Words seem to fail all of us when someone dies that we care about. When I have filled the role as minister at funerals, my bible college pastoral training does little to help. Death is a mysterious unknown that none of us will fully comprehend until we experience it firsthand. When someone dies we are left to scramble around, thinking not only about the personal loss of their presence, but also the sting of our own mortality. The person, the hero, we mourn today is distinguished author Doctor Hunter S Thompson.
It's time to rally around an embattled concept: free will.
Having aligned myself against a battalion of irresistible forces over the years, I've become a student of inevitability. How do environmentally destructive choices become inevitable? Near as I can tell, it starts when the people who will benefit from these choices simply begin to assert their inevitability. People seem especially receptive to inevitability right now. We're comforted by the notion that amid all the uncertainty and confusion, the restructuring and rightsizing and layoffs and insecurity-some larger forces are at work toward a predetermined outcome. We're sort of relieved to hear that something's inevitable, even if it's not necessarily something we like. It clarifies things. It's more pragmatic to be resigned to the inevitable than to chart a new course through the chaos. So the myth of inevitability spreads and the prophecy fulfills itself. If the proponents of a particular course can get a critical mass of folks to believe that it's a foregone conclusion, pretty soon it will be.
Having aligned myself against a battalion of irresistible forces over the years, I've become a student of inevitability. How do environmentally destructive choices become inevitable? Near as I can tell, it starts when the people who will benefit from these choices simply begin to assert their inevitability. People seem especially receptive to inevitability right now. We're comforted by the notion that amid all the uncertainty and confusion, the restructuring and rightsizing and layoffs and insecurity-some larger forces are at work toward a predetermined outcome. We're sort of relieved to hear that something's inevitable, even if it's not necessarily something we like. It clarifies things. It's more pragmatic to be resigned to the inevitable than to chart a new course through the chaos. So the myth of inevitability spreads and the prophecy fulfills itself. If the proponents of a particular course can get a critical mass of folks to believe that it's a foregone conclusion, pretty soon it will be.
Legislation Would Enact Sweeping Reforms by Next Major Election Cycle in 2006
WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara
Boxer (D-CA) today unveiled comprehensive voting reform legislation to make
sure that every American is able to vote and every vote is counted.
Senators Clinton and Boxer announced the legislation today in a press
conference joined by Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), who will
sponsor the legislation in the House of Representatives, and voting rights
advocates.
"Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral
obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process," said Senator
Clinton. "The smooth functioning of our democracy depends on voters having
faith in the fairness and accuracy of our voting system, and the Count Every
Vote Act is an important step toward restoring this covenant. We must be
able to easily and accurately count every vote so that every vote counts."
President Bush has re-nominated seven candidates for the federal appeals courts. Each was blocked by Senate Democrats during his first term. He also sent back to the Senate five other nominees for the federal appeals courts whose confirmations were slowed because of Democratic concerns regarding their legal backgrounds. Bush has accused Democrats of blocking votes on so many of his nominations that they have created “judicial emergencies.”
In reality, Bush has had more judicial nominees approved than in the first terms of Presidents Clinton and Reagan, and the administration of his father. Of the 214 nominees sent to the Senate for a vote during his first term, Democrats blocked only ten, using the filibuster. As such, 95 percent of Bush’s nominees have been approved. By contrast, from 1995 to 2000, while Republican Senator Orrin Hatch was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Senate blocked 35% of Clinton’s circuit court nominees.
In reality, Bush has had more judicial nominees approved than in the first terms of Presidents Clinton and Reagan, and the administration of his father. Of the 214 nominees sent to the Senate for a vote during his first term, Democrats blocked only ten, using the filibuster. As such, 95 percent of Bush’s nominees have been approved. By contrast, from 1995 to 2000, while Republican Senator Orrin Hatch was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Senate blocked 35% of Clinton’s circuit court nominees.
The National Association of Secretaries of State recently held its annual convention. In the wake of two disputatious presidential elections in a row, there was considerable sentiment at the meeting for a resolution barring state secretaries from simultaneously serving as partisan political officials. In the two states where the greatest controversies arose in 2000 and 2004, Florida and Ohio, this had been a glaring problem.
The convention did the opposite. It passed a resolution stipulating that it was O.K. for secretaries of state to proselytize for their parties’ candidates, indeed even to serve as party chairpersons during the campaign. By inference, the N.A.S.S. would allow such officials to suborn acts of voter disenfranchisement, make rulings contrary to state law, interfere with legally sanctioned recounts, even to later campaign for higher office on the basis of having “carried our state for (the incumbent).”
Deborah L. Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State, attended the convention. She said later that she recognized the need for reform, but added, “It’s hard to change the system. I’m a Democrat. I don’t want to appear partisan.”
The convention did the opposite. It passed a resolution stipulating that it was O.K. for secretaries of state to proselytize for their parties’ candidates, indeed even to serve as party chairpersons during the campaign. By inference, the N.A.S.S. would allow such officials to suborn acts of voter disenfranchisement, make rulings contrary to state law, interfere with legally sanctioned recounts, even to later campaign for higher office on the basis of having “carried our state for (the incumbent).”
Deborah L. Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State, attended the convention. She said later that she recognized the need for reform, but added, “It’s hard to change the system. I’m a Democrat. I don’t want to appear partisan.”
When conservatives talk of George W. Bush’s “transformational” role in American politics, they are referring to a fundamental change they seek in the U.S. system of government in which the Republican Party will dominate for years to come and power will not really be up for grabs in general elections…
Four years ago, some hopeful political analysts predicted that the rightward swing of the media pendulum, which so bedeviled Bill Clinton in the 1990s, would lurch back leftward once Bush took office in 2001…
But no self-correction ever occurred. Instead, as Bush enters the fifth year of his presidency, major news outlets are continuing to swing more to the right…
[W]hile commentators expect Democrats to praise Bush, the major news media acts as if Republican disdain for Democrats is the natural order of things. There was barely a peep of media objection on Jan. 20 when triumphant Republicans jeered John Kerry when he joined other senators at the Inaugural platform on Capitol Hill.
But it’s not only Democratic politicians who can expect rough treatment these days.
Four years ago, some hopeful political analysts predicted that the rightward swing of the media pendulum, which so bedeviled Bill Clinton in the 1990s, would lurch back leftward once Bush took office in 2001…
But no self-correction ever occurred. Instead, as Bush enters the fifth year of his presidency, major news outlets are continuing to swing more to the right…
[W]hile commentators expect Democrats to praise Bush, the major news media acts as if Republican disdain for Democrats is the natural order of things. There was barely a peep of media objection on Jan. 20 when triumphant Republicans jeered John Kerry when he joined other senators at the Inaugural platform on Capitol Hill.
But it’s not only Democratic politicians who can expect rough treatment these days.
The more things change, the more things stay the same. And Gallup is showing us that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.
On the heels of the Iraqi election, and with the White House needing a boost in Bush’s image and approval ratings as he tries to ram through a terrible budget and Social Security privatization plan to a wavering GOP, much was made yesterday about the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll done over the weekend. This poll, bull-horned through the media and rightwing blogosphere, showed an incredible jump in Bush’s approval rating to 57%, a five-point jump from the polls done in early January. Yet even those earlier January polls it turned out were suspect because, you guessed it, they were based on a sample that had more Republicans in it than Democrats (37.2% GOP, 35.6% Democrat, and 27% Independent).
So is this recent poll, showing Bush with a growing and mandate-building approval rating of 57% a clear sign of emerging Bush strength?
On the heels of the Iraqi election, and with the White House needing a boost in Bush’s image and approval ratings as he tries to ram through a terrible budget and Social Security privatization plan to a wavering GOP, much was made yesterday about the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll done over the weekend. This poll, bull-horned through the media and rightwing blogosphere, showed an incredible jump in Bush’s approval rating to 57%, a five-point jump from the polls done in early January. Yet even those earlier January polls it turned out were suspect because, you guessed it, they were based on a sample that had more Republicans in it than Democrats (37.2% GOP, 35.6% Democrat, and 27% Independent).
So is this recent poll, showing Bush with a growing and mandate-building approval rating of 57% a clear sign of emerging Bush strength?
President Bush submitted a $2.57 trillion budget to Congress which eliminates or drastically cuts 150 governmental programs. The budget is an attempt to meet his goal of slashing the deficit in half by 2009, without giving up tax cuts for the wealthy which were implemented during his first term. When asked about the cuts, Bush said “Spending discipline requires difficult choices.” But much in Bush’s budget runs contrary to his administration’s rhetoric.