Advertisement

AUSTIN, Texas -- The state of the union is that money talks and public policy is sold to the highest bidder. Those who give money in political contributions -- less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. population gave 83 percent of all campaign contributions in the 2002 elections -- get back billions in tax breaks, subsidies and the right to exploit public land at ridiculously low prices.

This system in turn costs ordinary Americans billions of dollars, not to mention the costs to health, safety and the environment, and the cost of not having enough money for good schools.

Public Campaign, the group working for public financing of political campaigns, has put together some of the salient information in the form of a poster, available at www.publiccampaign.org -- and perhaps the most depressing thing about it is the size of the payoffs for relatively small investments in political campaigns.

For example, the top corporations that paid zero taxes from 1996 to 1998 --including AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan, Enron,
AUSTIN, Texas -- The state of the union is that money talks and public policy is sold to the highest bidder. Those who give money in political contributions -- less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. population gave 83 percent of all campaign contributions in the 2002 elections -- get back billions in tax breaks, subsidies and the right to exploit public land at ridiculously low prices.

This system in turn costs ordinary Americans billions of dollars, not to mention the costs to health, safety and the environment, and the cost of not having enough money for good schools.

Public Campaign, the group working for public financing of political campaigns, has put together some of the salient information in the form of a poster, available at www.publiccampaign.org -- and perhaps the most depressing thing about it is the size of the payoffs for relatively small investments in political campaigns.

For example, the top corporations that paid zero taxes from 1996 to 1998 --including AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Chase Manhattan, Enron,
I was in South Carolina to haul a 1968 22-foot Airstream back to California behind my Ford 350 one-ton truck. Interstate 40 would have been a logical route west, but out of respect for the late Patton, the bulldog martyr to cop violence, I headed north from Knoxville, Tenn., into Kentucky. Rolling out of Lexington, Ky., toward St. Louis at dusk, I could see graceful horses nibbling at the snow-covered pastures as the sunset turned the western sky red.

All the way across the Great Plains I listened to radio reports of the cold about to roll down out of Canada. There's nothing between you and the North Pole out there on the prairie. "Not even a tree to hide behind," as one 19th-century pioneer homemaker plaintively wrote home to her European mother as she and her family cowered in their sod cabin amidst the terrible blizzards of 1886 and 1887 that finished off the cattle boom and sent Teddy Roosevelt scuttling east from his ranch on the Little Missouri.

The snow and ice finally caught up with me 100 miles east of Denver, where I sat in the lobby of a Comfort Inn listening to a Cherokee
Freep Hero: Nancy Talanian and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Just before Christmas, Oakland, CA became the 20th municipality in the U.S. to pass a resolution prohibiting its employees from cooperating with federal officials who are utilizing the so-called Patriot Act to spy on city residents. Talanian runs the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. The organization website includes a “How To” manual for communities to pass anti-Patriot Act resolutions. Some other cities adopting the resolution are Denver, Santa Fe and Santa Cruz. Talanian’s heroic defense of the U.S. Constitution makes her a Freep hero, but also calls us to action. We need to make Columbus, Ohio a Bills of Rights “Safety Zone.” Let’s rein in Big Brother in the New Year.

The Free Press Salutes:

Christian Peacemaker Teams

Thirty-seven U.S. states have animal cruelty laws that result in felony convictions. My own state of Ohio does not. What does that tell us about the mentality of humans in the Buckeye State? Well, if the riots I heard about at OSU are any indication – all over a bunch of large men wrestling, grabbing and grinding each other over a football – then the future is bleak.

There are two identical bills in the Ohio legislature right now that would increase the penalties for animal cruelty, House Bill 480 and Senate Bill 221. S.B. 221 passed on December 10, 2002 and is awaiting the signature of Governor Bob “Serial Killer” Taft. I hope a man with so much human blood on his hands will find some compassion for innocent animals. It seems a passive-sounding group “The Ohio Association of Animal Owners” is putting up quite a fight against animal protection legislation in Ohio -- battling the “animal rights terrorists ,” as it were. Contact your state reps and senators and ask them to support the two bills.

Mary Yoder is a Columbus native and member of the Columbus Mennonite Church. She currently serves as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Hebron. CPT reports from around the world are available on this website

  School patrol is part of CPT’s daily routine. From 7-8 AM 2000 children from K-8th grade descend on Tariquibnziad Street, going to various schools. At 11:00 AM another 2000 students descend the streets. Since IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) took over 3 large schools, including a brand new, state the art facility, Palestinian children on “T” Street are crowded into small spaces and have a shortened day for split sessions.

The army closes these schools approximately twice a week We are never told the reason. Some soldiers will say its for “security”. This past Spring, 2000 school computers in the West Bank were either smashed or stolen by IDF.

“Only in the most direct sense is the Bush administration’s Iraq policy directed against Saddam Hussein. In contrast to all the loud talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights violations, very little is being said about oil. The administration has been tight-lipped about its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq, and has repeatedly disavowed any interest in the country’s oil resources. But press reports indicate that U.S. officials are considering a prolonged occupation of Iraq after a war to topple Saddam Hussein. It is likely that a U.S.-controlled Iraq will be the linchpin of a new order in the world oil industry. A war against Iraq may well herald a major realignment of the Middle East power balance.“
The USA has bombed the following countries between 1945 and 1999:

China (1945-46 & 1950-53)
Korea (1950-53)
Guatemala (1954 & 1960)
Indonesia (1958)
Cuba (1959-60)
Congo (1964)
Peru (1965)
Laos (1964-73)
Vietnam (1961-73)
Cambodia (1969-70)
Guatemala (1967-69)
Grenada (1983)
Libya (1986)
El Salvador & Nicaragua (all of the 1980s)
Panama (1989)
Iraq (1991-present)
Sudan (1998)
Afghanistan (1998)
Yugoslavia (1999)

None of these bombing campaigns led to the establishment of humane democracies in the countries.
Following the infamous September 11 terrorist attacks, there’s been an active international debate surrounding the Bush administration’s secret oil negotiations with the Taliban earlier in the summer of 2001. U.S. oil giant Unocal proposed a massive natural gas pipeline project extracting oil and gas from former Soviet Central Asian republics through then-Taliban ruled Afghanistan to its final destination in Pakistan.

The recently revised and expanded English edition of Forbidden Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy And The Failed Hunt For Bin Laden details the Bush administration’s threats against the Taliban a month prior to the 9/11 events. French intelligence experts Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié suggest that Bush administration threats stating that “Either you accept our carpet of gold or we’ll carpet you with bombs,” led to the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

At the conclusion of his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed the “hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities.”

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS