Congratulations all around

The Tenth Dems once again pulled off a terrific event with yet another Senator/Presidential Hopeful as Keynote speaker. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though.

The afternoon started out all Seals. Dan Seals attended and talked to many of his future constituents, then he made a terrific speech. Dan admitted that he had a little trouble making it to Highland Park on time for the event. "All the smoke from all the flags that were burning...someone should work on an amendment...." He got a laugh, but maybe not from Keynote Speaker Evan Bayh who voted yes on the failed amendment.

Dan told the crowd that he started in living rooms and now he is covering the district with his message of change and raising money too, more than Kirk last quarter. He said we need to take back the Senate or the House to place a check on this dangerously incompetent administration, but he'd prefer we take back the House. Why not both!

Bayh followed Dan and talked about the Bush administration completely failing to address the everyday concerns of Americans. He told us that he believes the country is ready for a change. He saw a bumper sticker in Indiana that read: " I miss Nixon." "It's that bad," he said.

The good news to Bayh is that the Bush era is going to be over in 2 1/2 years. Bush caused needless divisiveness and has said that the next administration will have to make the tough decisions on Iraq. Bush abdicating his responsibility on one of our toughest issues, we have a profound responsibility to think about what is going to come next.

Bayh wants to start with education and talked about a program in Indiana where students eligible for school lunch programs who keep good grades and stay out of trouble get full scholarships to state schools that are also transferable to other schools. That program took Indiana from 40th to 13th place in the US for numbers of high school students who go to college, become better employees, taxpayers and citizens. He would also work on energy independence because he believes alternative energy and energy efficiency programs will create jobs.

Bayh believes that Bush failed to harness the energy and patriotism of the country leaving it to self interest that is not enough to take us where we want to go for our future.

He left little time for questions although he had promised to answer 6 or 7. Shelly Drobny went first and that was a good thing because he made a general point and asked a general question on behalf of many of us. Drobny spoke for the democratic base that also makes up the Air American listeners. He remarked and asked Bayh to comment on the concerns of this group that Democrats are not supporting them. Bayh, in my opinion, missed a terrific opportunity to speak to the base. He talked about Rove and politics and what he thinks it will take to win, but never really addressed Drobny's question. Bayh said that Democrats need to get better at articulating what they are for rather than what they are against. To me that is just a tired old republican talking point, but if that is the case, then we are in good shape in the Illinois Tenth as we have that candidate who always talks about his values, his vision and where he sees us going if he were to be elected to congress.

Many congratulations to Anne Wedner and George Rosenblit who shared the Volunteer of the Year Award. These are two fine dedicated people who work tirelessly for their community and country. I am proud to know them both.

Stay tuned, tommorrow George Rosenblit will be a guest blogger.

Images from the Tenth Dems Annual Event

There will me much more on this later, but here are some pictures.















Above: Host Highland Park Councilman Jim Kirsch welcomes the crowd and kids me about photo ops.















Above: Congressional Candidate Dan Seals speaks to the crowd.















Above and below: Seals speaks to guests.






























Above: part of the crowd relaxes on this beautiful Highland Park afternoon before the event.















Above:Anne Wedner listens as Lauren Beth Gash awards her the Volunteer of the Year Award. Below: George Rosenblit accepts his Volunteer of the Year Award from Karen McCormick.




Above: Indiana Senator Evan Bayh takes some water before speaking. He didn't take many questions and I heard him tell someone that he thought I was a reporter. I laughed and told him I wasn't a reporter as he left. "I'm a blogger," I said. He said, "even better."

Slinky Economy

Dan Seals has been talking about the Bush/Kirk Slinky Economy:

The top is lifted up the middle is stretched and the bottom falls out.

It's true. Even people in the Illinois Tenth are feeling the squeeze. One young woman who just graduated from college described her generation as "Generation Broke" with 20 years of debt before them from college expenses. Last November, Mark Kirk voted to voted to cut student loan subsidies and freeze Pell Grants for yet another year breaking a 2004 campaign promise under his Main Street Agenda.

That's not to mention gasoline prices which not only increase the cost of summer vacation, but hurt small businesses in our district that need to use trucks and other vehicles. They can pass that cost on to the consumer, but then their price is higher and consumers think twice about using the product or service.

Yesterday, Bloomberg ran an article on the Bush economy. Folks thought Bush shared their values, but they were mistaken because his real values involve making a lot of money for the haves and have mores and his faith that he works to sell to the religious right as genuine is really just old fashioned faith in the dollar. According to the Bloomberg article:

More than six in 10 Americans say the country is on the wrong track, according to a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. More than half disapprove of Bush's handling of the economy, and 36 percent strongly disapprove. Almost half, 48 percent, say his policies have made the economy worse than it was when he became president; 19 percent say it's better.

In the Illinois Tenth, we have to remember that Mark Kirk is right along side Bush when it comes to the economy having voted for each and every one of his deficit producing, sqeezing the middle class budgets.

Bloomberg talked to several people in neighboring Indiana:

While Evansville's unemployment rate has dropped below the national rate, to 4.5 percent, Ellsworth, 47, plans to make the region's economy the top issue, said campaign manager Jay Howser. ``The economy is shaky at best,'' he said.

"Too many of our jobs have been shipped overseas and too many workers are being left behind. We plan to hold John Hostettler accountable."

Kirk is right there with Bush on overseas outsourcing of jobs and is supported by the outsourcing support organization Committee of 100. Kirk plugs them too.

Dan Seals is concerned for the district's and the country's workers. He observes that while the economy has grown under Bush, that growth has left behind millions of Americans and he calls that shameful. Nancy Pelosi recently pointed out that only 75,000 new jobs created in May, the smallest number since October, while real wages have remained stagnant over the last three years. So, we are becoming more insecure in our employment and wages and have more bills to pay under current economic policy.

Also shameful is the deficit. Seals says he'd rather give his credit card to his 6 year old than to Bush. The deficit will be a burden on Seals' six year old and all the rest of the children of our district for years to come and, as Seals points out, it is just bad foreign policy as we cede our fiscal sovereignty to countries like China who purchase our debt. Kirk apparently supports our handoff of power to China. He calls for strong relations with China with a lot of unsubstantial happy talk which sounds good on the surface, but in all his writing about our relationship with China, he never mentions that they own about $177 billion of U.S. debt. I cannot help but wonder whether all his pro-Chinese business positions despite their terrible human rights record with workers have something to do with gaining our general acceptance their ownership of this debt.

Bush and Kirk supporters like to talk about growth, but when economic growth fails to include the vast bulk of Americans benefiting only his have and have mores, what is the point?

Here is what Seals says about the deficit. Seals wants us to become more responsible in our spending and to turn around our priorities to education, health care, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and reflect the real values of our district.

The economy should not be a toy of the connected, wealthy and foreign interests. We have to take back our country and our economy. Help Dan Seals do that. Today, at the end of the quarter, would be a great time to make a donation.

I wonder. Are slinkys made in China?

Wowee

Dan Seals is on the front page of Kos and I almost missed it! Check out the title link.

To all the Kossacks who happen upon my blog tonight, hi! Click around for info on Kirk. I do mix it in with some other thoughts. Here is a bit of what you will find about Kirk on this blog:

Kirk's been ignoring the separation of church and state by making campaign rounds at synagogues where he uses holocaust imagery to scare the local Jewish community and enflame emotions. Check here and here.

Kirk is firmly in the "stay the course" column on the Iraq war.

Kirk always votes for the Bush budgets, cutting education, access to benefits for the needy....

The failed Medicare D was one of his pet projects.

Kirk says he's pro-choice, but ducks out when the voting gets tough (scroll down here for the link to the non-vote) and gives early and often to the campaigns of anti-choice gop friends.

He always votes against access to health insurance, even for veterans (here too).

He has no problem with NSA spying, votes against our civil liberties and thinks we should discriminate by race and religion.

He voted for the estate tax credit.

He has lost his environmental credentials with the LCV and now they rate him at only 39%.

Helped create the misinformation campaign raising doubt on global warming.

He supports outsourcing of jobs....

...and he has absolutely no sense of direction.

Oh, it just goes on and on. Every day that I wonder what I'm going to write about, he comes up with something.

Meet the Democat! Here too. Here too.

More Tidbits

My internet connection is really slow today...

1. Ald. Burke of the City of Chicago wants to outlaw trans-fats. Compare that with the list of restaurants participating in the Taste of Chicago.

2. Best line ever sent to me in a political email from NOW. The are describing how the Bush administration (fully supported by Kirk of course) affects the life of an average woman: "...an administration whose idea of small government is taking up residence in her vagina. "

3. Obama thinks that democrats are afraid of the faithful. I disagree, Senator Obama. I think we are just fine with the truly faithful. We are just skeptical of a leader who claims to be ordained by God to be president . We don't think that is faith or that the president is truly faithful. We think that he is just a con man using religion to gain political power. In the process, Bush has torn many churches apart and that has nothing to do with real faith.

4. Bush wants women of child bearing years to be treated as pre-pregnant. What we really are under Bush and Kirk rule, with all the outsourcing supported by Kirk and all the downsizing caused by the bad economy and high cost of health care, is pre-unemployed.

5. With all the politicians that will be draping themselves in the American flag on the 4th, I'd like to see at least one drape himself in the US Constitution with the full Bill of Rights, unamended. Kirk will be doing double duty draping himself in both the US and Israeli flags, but what kind of a friend stirs up trouble in the region, arms everyone to the teeth and sits back and watches the outcome, raking in the arms and oil profits?

Tidbits

1. Dan Seals wowed the crowd in Chicago last night. It is amazing how much support he's getting from all over. What did Dan think of the gop wanting to prosecute the NY Times for publishing the bank record spying story? It's nothing more than diversion from the real issues like the flag buring amendment and the proposed amendment to outlaw gay marriage. I'll add Kirk's suburban strategy to that list of diversions. This gop outrage seems to be going nowhere for them as no one agrees that it is illegal for the press to publish the truth. I expect it to disappear soon.

2. Yesterday, Durbin made a good speech this afternoon against the flag burning amendment according to my dad who was home under the weather watching C-span. Might be worth catching on reruns. Oh, and the ill conceived bill lost in the Senate by 1 vote, so basically we are hanging on to small shreds of the good old USA by the thin thread of one vote.

3. The incompetent google search turns up a lot on Bush (the I'm Feeling Lucky Button turns up something even more interesting), but I agree with Rockridge. They are not incompetent. The incompetence thing is just a misguided attempt to create a frame that mainstream Dems hope will reign in the swing voters. However, if they were incompetent as Rockridge points out, that would mean they had a good plan and executed it badly. Truth is they had a bad plan and executed it rather well. The plan is to weaken the nation and that they have done quite well. As Dan Seals pointed out, we are giving up our economic sovereignty with the enormous budget deficit and the rest of the world owing our debt. Do we want to maintain this bad plan? I hope not.

4. Speaking of swing voters. Here's something interesting sent to me by a reader:

A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (D) poll looks at "swing voters." Key findings:

• "It is almost impossible to overestimate the anger of swing voters." An amazingly high 73% say the country is on the wrong track and 66% disapprove of President Bush's job performance.
• In named trial heats, swing voters prefer Democratic candidates for Congress 45% to 28% over the Republicans.
• The battle for the Senate, "influenced disproportionately by Republican travails in Ohio and Pennsylvania," looks even worse for Republicans (53% to 31%).
• "Swing voters embrace an agenda that invests more money in new clean energy, affordable health care for all and strengthening education with these investments paid for by eliminating recently passed tax cuts for corporations and people making over $200,000 a year." http://politicalwire.com/

5. David Gill running for Congress in the IL 15th on Hope vs. Fear in American Politics is set forth below. You can send him a few bucks at ActBlue which is linked to this site in the right hand column above.

Hope vs. Fear in American Politics

by David Gill

As we approach another 4th of July, I was recently asked my views on the topic of "Hope vs. Fear in American Politics." There are many politicians who focus on peoples' fears: from terrorism to gay marriage, their message is one of impending doom.

While there are many legitimate concerns in today's world, I prefer to focus on hope. Since the very birth of our nation, previous generations of Americans have overcome severe difficulties: King George and the British empire; the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles targeted on large U.S. cities; the Axis powers of WWII; the divisive issue of slavery which nearly tore our country apart internally.

All the problems America faces today can be overcome, just as we overcame these daunting challenges in the past. With proper leadership in Washington, D.C. , we can greatly improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans. Health care, Iraq , the environment, security-- there exist terrific solutions for all these concerns, if we had leaders with the political will to implement such solutions.

And thanks to the genius of those who wrote our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, we can freely choose brave and thoughtful leaders who stand prepared to solve all that ails us. Many Americans have appropriately grown cynical about politics-- the moneyed interests do exert tremendous control over the process. But until those moneyed interests tear up our Constitution, there will always be a place for ordinary citizens in the halls of Congress, citizens like myself who seek to enter politics as a service to their fellow Americans.

By the time of this November's election, I'll have invested nearly four years in the pursuit of Illinois' 15th District seat in the U.S. House. Thousands of hours, tens of thousands of miles in my car, innumerable speeches and hand shakes. I couldn't persist with this upstart challenger campaign if I wasn't filled with the hope that, together, we can make life so much better for ourselves and our children.

A Little Math

Sometimes 2 + 2 =5 and I've been thinking about this equation:

NSA Spying and Data mining of telecom Records
+ theft of Veterans Records
+ GOP data mining for votes
= Would you put it past them...
data mining claiming it's needed for national security,
but really using it to find potential voters,
or
to find voters whose votes you want to lose,
or
perhaps voters they want to
scrub
from the voting rolls.

GOP has learned that math can be fun.

Class Action Lawsuit against NSA Spying

In the wake of the stories on secret (now not-so-secret) spying rooms at AT&T facilities and spying on banking records, we must not forget about the EFF class action lawsuit against AT&T for collaboration with illegal spying. EFF is the Electronic Frontier Foundation whose mission is to protect free speech in electronic communication. They are the folks who won the case that decided computer code was protected speech under the First Amendment.

Now the EFF is suing AT&T for working with the NSA in its illegal spying program. The suit specifically alleges violation of the First and Fourth Amendments and various federal privacy laws (FISA at 50 USC Sec. 1809, 18 USC 2511, 18 USC 2702(a)(1) or (a)(2), and 18 USC 2702(a)(3)) by providing the government with direct access to actual communications and traffic data. The suit also alleges violations of FCC statutes and laws under Title 47 by publication of intercepted communications (47 USC Sec. 605). There are also allegations under California's Unfair, Unlawful And Deceptive Business Practices laws.

On May 15, the government filed a redacted motion to dismiss arguing that "any judicial inquiry into the whether AT&T broke the law could reveal state secrets and harm national security."

EFF and the plaintiffs argued that their prima facie case could be shown without reviewing classified documents because their entire case was based on the public record. Remember on a motion to dismiss, the case need not be proven, but only has to contain enough facts to adequate to articulate underlying conduct supporting the cause of action. However, on June 6, the court ordered the government to produce classified documents in camera:

After reviewing the submitted papers, the court concludes that this case cannot proceed and discovery cannot commence until the court examines the classified documents to assess whether and to what extent the state secrets privilege
applies.

The court was not impressed with the idea of making the prima facie case (geez, I must have gone to the wrong law school because where I went that was important). Anyway, the court really seems to want to see the state secrets for themselves before deciding on whether or not the government can maintain a state secret defense. I might actually agree with the court ultimately seeing it anyway because of what John Dean said about the state secret defense in the Ellsberg Pentagon Papers case. Remember, he said that the government attorneys had no clue what state secrets they were protecting and it turned out they were just making it all up.

There was more argument on the government's state secret defense last Friday as AT&T argued its motion to dismiss. EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl argued:

We have shown that AT&T is diverting traffic wholesale to the NSA. It is not a secret, and it is no reason to deny AT&T customers the opportunity to show the court that this dragnet surveillance program violates the law and their privacy rights.

EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston later said:

We can be safe, secure, and keep within the rule of law. Our legal system demands that the court decide whether this wholesale surveillance program is proper.

Read what Kurt Opsahl has to say about the government's defense here. I found it sort of scary. They type of stuff found in books about extremist dictators and such:

In short, the Government asserts that AT&T and the Executive can break the laws crafted by Congress, and there is nothing the Judiciary can do about it.

The case is still pending and you can keep an eye on it here. With the Supreme Court Bush put into place, what are the chances of this ever passing out of motion practice? Still, I think it was good that EFF filed. Someone has to stand for law and reason if the American president and American congress will not.

I win! I win!

Best blog post title of the day from Bride Of Acheron. Gee thanks. Wish it didn't happen anyway. Wish my congressman voted for intelligent taxation and spending with investments in education and health care and actually cared about someone other than himself and his super rich campaign contributors and gop leadership bosses. We can change that. You can help!

They are not incompetent

Click on the title link. Finally, someone willing to say it besides me. They are not at all incompetent. They are very competent at getting what they want and the disaster they have put us in from pointless, unwinnable, unending war to 30,000 layoffs at GM and 48 million uninsured is all very intentional. The intent is to weaken and scare Americans in order to control us politically and economically and shift most of the country's wealth to their few and select supporters. It's that simple.

Mark Kirk was wrong and prefers to stay that way

Take a look at this thread from Democratic Underground.

They can add this quote to their mix:

Last year, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri1, an Iraqi defector, reported that he visited 20 secret facilities dedicated to producing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He supported his report with copies of Iraqi government contracts and technical specifications. It is clear that Iraq is advancing program to develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of its commitments imposed by the UN Security Council.~~Mark Kirk, October 8, 2002

Here's his little footnote: "1 He later returned to Iraq and was executed. "

Here's a November 17th, 2005 report from Rolling Stone:

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

And the footnote, that wasn't true either.

Why won't Mark Kirk say he was wrong and help work for a better solution in Iraq?

Since he won't and won't tell us why, I'll opt for a reason by someone pretty smart:

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bush and Cheney do not have the answer

The answer to terrorism is not to be terrorized.~~Salman Rushdie

Rushdie was on Bill Moyers Friday night and he discussed terrorism. Rushdie lived in the UK during the heyday of the IRA when bombs were going off in shopping malls. Rushdie said the terrorism ultimately stopped when the Brits decided to simply go on with their lives and not be terrorized.

I never want to see the US become the place where bombs go off in shopping malls, but Rushdie's point does mean that the Bush administration is more likely to lead us to that place than a more sensible handling of terrorism would. Bush, Cheney, Kirk & Co. want us to be terrorized and seek their protection. That gives them secure power, but it also gives the terrorists what they want, terrorized, insecure, changed Americans. We need to question the motives of this administration, the skewed news they spread, and the notion that we have to give up our Constitutional rights in exchange for protection. We need to reject their protection, refuse to be terrorized and refuse to give up our rights. That will end the terrorism, and the extortion.

Erosion of the Fourth Amendment Not Necessary to Fight Terrorism

Anyone reporting that things are not completely normal in Chicago today are wrong. Everyone is out and about, some are looking for somewhere to eat for lunch without subjecting themselves to trans-fats and others are carrying around their bags of trans-fats all as usual. We are, however, all missing the wonderful smells that used to come from the Bloomer Chocolate Factory which some sore sport ended by reporting them to the EPA. Search me why they don't go after all the trucks around here spewing poison, but come down hard on the releasors of the aroma of chocolate fudge.

The real story of the alleged Sears Tower Terrorists is that it proves that regular old, go before a judge and get a warrant law enforcement works:

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said during an unrelated appearance Thursday night on CNN's "Larry King Live" that the arrests were part of "an ongoing operation."

"Whenever we undertake an operation like this, we would not do it without the approval of a judge," Mueller said. "We've got search warrants and arrest warrants and the like. And so yes, it's a concern."

So sad for those who want to convince us that we have to give up our liberty for security. Turns out we don't.

Alms for the rich! Alms for the rich!

H.R.5638 Title: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to increase the unified credit against the estate tax to an exclusion equivalent of $5,000,000 and to repeal the sunset provision for the estate and generation-skipping taxes, and for other purposes. Kirk--Aye.

Democat is worried

He doesn't want to talk about the war.
He doesn't want to talk about Medicare D making prescriptions more expensive.
He doesn't want to talk about the 48 million uninsured Americans.
He doesn't want to talk about NSA spying and the loss of our civil liberties.
He doesn't want to talk about the rewriting of our Constitution to write in hate and write out protections.

This is what he wants to talk about:

"Rep Mark Kirk (R) of the 10th is going to have a meeting on Pet Legislation in the Glen from 10-12 AM July 8th at the corner of Chestnut and Patriot."

Saw it on Craig's list.

Democat is just sure he's planning something she won't like.

But, maybe this is what he's worried about.

Hi to NLG

Hi to the National Lawyers Guild, Chicago Chapter.

If you are out protesting, Know Your Rights. The NLG's Legal Observer's can attend your events.

...and they're funny.

Support the NLG because you never know when it will be you who needs them. They've been around a long time working for civil rights, civil liberties and the justice we were promised, but don't always get.

We needed medical reform, we got bankruptcy changes for the credit card companies

I'm not the only one talking about health care in our community. Someone who knows quite a lot about it is also concerned, Dr. Keller, our Lake County Coroner. See, he's NOT a "you plug 'em, I plant 'em" sort of coroner, but a real doctor who cares about our community. Here's what he had to say on his blog. One particularly upsetting line to the lawyer in me was this:

Medical debt is crushing people who have no insurance. It has become an issue for individuals with insurance (62% of adults with medical debt were/are insured).

That's coming from the doctor. The lawyer will tell you that our congress could have helped with this, but chose instead to enact a so-called bankruptcy reform and (ha!) consumer protection bill that failed to save bankruptcy protection for those in debt due to catastrophic illness. So, you can wring your hands and whine that we cannot have a national single-payer health care plan because because because because because, but that just doesn't cut it. Usually, the becauses involve republican talking points against any federal program designed to actually help people. The real story is in the campaign contributions and consequent payback.

Mark Kirk has received almost $100,000 from the health care sector and he not only voted for, but touted, the unworkable Medicare D that makes seniors' medicines even more expensive and drug companies richer, and he always votes against access to health insurance, even when it is health care for veterans fighting the wars he supports, getting BIG ZERO rating on the issue from Progressive Punch. Kirk also voted for the 2005 bankruptcy changes without the amendment for catastrophic illness. Kirk has received about $216,800 from the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector.

Dr. Keller doesn't comment on Mark Kirk, but here is what he said in conclusion on the lack of access to health insurance:

Lack of medical insurance limits access to healthcare. It limits an individual’s ability to properly manage chronic health problems. It limits access to health maintenance and disease prevention/early screening measures. It contributes to the death of these individuals.

Upside Down and Inside Out but no EL service up the North Shore

Don't like the idea of national health care? Welfare for single moms and their kids sends your mind spinning? Hate minimum wage protection for workers? Done with the public school system? Sickened by Medicare and Medicaid (they are different, you know)? Ready to argue against anything that helps the working stiff and everything that even approaches the liberal agenda until your blue in the face even if it is against your own economic interest? We don't have the money. It will raise my taxes. People will take advantage. US businesses cannot compete with the Chinese (because their system is just so wonderful). It will force everyone into the worst plans available. Kids don't need anything but a religious education anyway....

I have heard it all, but I never get the answer to this question: If we cannot afford to help the weakest and most needy in our society and cannot put some funds toward uplifting hard working, hard studying Americans who deserve more opportunity, why can we always afford corporate welfare, even for the richest of corporations?

No matter what, we seem to always be able to afford corporate welfare of the sort where regular working folks pay taxes so corporate upper management and large shareholders, who never put it back into the economy at a rate anywhere near what is spent on them, can make, not just a sensible profit, but a killing. From the taking of native lands for the railroads in the mid 19th century to the 2003 attack of Iraq so Halliburton can obtain 600% more the federal contracts it had in 2000 to the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform and Consumer Protection Act that, oops, forgot about the Consumer Protection part, to 2006 when our parents became subject to Medicare D, written by and for the drug companies and oops again, forgot to make it cheaper for seniors to purchase their medicines, we have always funded the wealthiest while neglecting, not only the needy, but our own growth, future, innovation and general uplifting.

Feeling great about nixing the liberal agenda for compassionate conservatism? Check out the Waxman report on government contracting under Bush. It's a chronicle of political/corporate corruption, illegal monopolies, senseless waste, unnecessary and costly middlemen, abuse of loopholes created for flexibility, abuse of perks and expense accounts, rewards for bad planning and bad work, political decisions over professional decisions, and just plain old fashioned stealing. The compassionate conservatives forgot to mention who gets their compassion and the voters forgot to ask.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if Halliburton had a subsidiary that built bridges in Alaska there would be two Alaskan bridges under construction as we speak rather than two projects misrepresented and killed by Kirk so he could say he did. If CACI could make money on single-payer national health care, we'd have it. If Lockheed Martin built public transit systems, the Red Line would be running all the way up to Northbrook Court by now as it was once promised. I would have really liked that too.

Long time over due callout

I have added several great local blogs to my blogroll and am long overdue in pointing it out. On the other hand, I did finally have time to do my ironing, steam clean my carpets and wash my floors. Got sick of looking at a dusty Democat.

Here are the blogs I've recently listed:

Wurfwhile
50 Miles Out
Proviso Probe
LiberILView
Courage Makes a Majority

Take a click over and say hi.

Some old favorites of mine are below:

The Daily Curmudgeon
Philosophe Forum
AtCenterNetwork
IronwoodTree

The Daily Curmudgeon is going to be appearing soon at a house party near you (if you live anywhere near the IL Tenth that is). Watch for details.

Kirk doesn't think the war is as important as say...

401Ks for babies. Of the debate on the war he said: "there are also a number of other things we need to debate."

There are other things to debate, but with the war costing $289,506,344,576+, it is sort of a show stopper on the other issues, isn't it?

Space, the final frontier

Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist and author thinks it's time to move out into space. He means really move as in move in because of the increased danger of planetary catastrophe and possibility of building space stations and colonies.

The right immediately objected because they felt it suggested that we should not experience the rapture and that it could suggest that he agreed with Al Gore. The left immediately objected because they felt it suggested that we should go along with the anti-environmental stance of the Bush administration because there are plenty of other earths out there to waste and replace.

Personally, I think Hawking is a pure scientist and just plain old human. He sees the possibilities out there and is talking in the far long term. While he discussed potential disasters both man made and otherwise, and some with a lot of political baggage, Hawking was also talking about the possibility of a high tech future for mankind that includes potential advancement of our culture and science. He probably likes that idea a lot. Technology not only helped Hawking in his work, but in his life. He really could not exist and succeed as he does without it as he is living with ALS and cannot move much at all or even speak without his computer. I think Hawking sees the miracle of his everyday existence and wants technological miracles for the rest of us, and the technology he knows best is astro-physics.

Let's just let Hawking study, discover and dream without all the political stuff because he may just help make something wonderous possible for us in our future as his predecessors in physics did for our ancestor and for us.

Suburban strategy for homelessness

Bad leadership does a lot of bad things to a country. It causes it to lose all credibility in the world. It causes it to put the bulk of its resources into destruction rather than growth. It burdens its people with wars, high prices, corruption and increased crime. It also causes decay of the mythical American Dream. Case in point, the tremendous rise in mortgage foreclosure and the fraud that surrounds it.

The mortgage foreclosure rate is way up. The Chicago Tribune recently reported:

In Illinois during the first three months of 2006 nearly 13,700 properties entered foreclosure, up 32 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005, according to an analysis by property tracker RealtyTrac Inc.

The numbers are grimmer elsewhere in the Midwest. Michigan and Ohio, battered by automotive-related job losses, together recorded 45,000 mortgages entering some stage of foreclosure in the first quarter. Those are increases of 91 percent and 39 percent, respectively, compared with last year's fourth quarter.

Nationally, foreclosures are up 38 percent, higher than in any quarter of last year, RealtyTrac said.

There are many reasons for the growing number of defaults, and there are suggestions that the foreclosure trend may soon worsen.

Layoffs due to corporate downsizings, health-care issues, increasing debt levels and rising interest rates all are factors. In addition, a growing number of homeowners are relying on adjustable-rate mortgages, catching some people by surprise when their monthly payment rises.

Significantly, some of those ARMs were offered with an initial three-year to five-year period in which the rate was fixed. At the end of that period the mortgages will be reset at prevailing rates, potentially upending borrowers as interest rates have been rising. For many such people that moment is approaching.

"The increases we've been seeing in foreclosures don't even reflect the worst-case scenario that could happen when the $2.7 trillion in adjustable-rate mortgages are reset over the next 18 months," said Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing at RealtyTrac.

People just cannot afford housing and if they can job insecurity and higher costs for everything else can put them in mortgage default. That plus the unsupportably high cost of housing in our district causes folks to get in way over their heads. By "unsupportably high cost of housing", I mean that the propeties themselves do not always support the high costs. Problems in the market like fraud and unusual rates of investment purchases cause much of the increase. Lenders don't help control the situation like they used to either. I know of a hairdresser in our district that was told by her loan officer that she could afford a $600,000 house. She was smart enough to know better, but many think the loan officers are economic professionals and are protecting the lenders, so they would never get a home buyer in too deep. That is just not true any more.

High housing costs and bad lending practices have bred a whole new industry of fraud, mortgage rescue fraud. Basically, mortgage rescue fraud is a practice of seeking out distressed properties, promising the owners financial assistance to buy them time to come up with the money to pay back mortgage payments, charging exorbitant fees and rents for continued occupancy, requiring the owners to deed their home to the rescuer under promises of a sale back at a reasonable price, but when the original owners cannot make the payments, the rescuers sell the properties to third parties who evict the original distressed owners. Often the original owners have no idea that they have transferred ownership of their homes to the rescuers. They think, and are told, it's only legal mumbo jumbo to help the rescuers help them. While there can be legal, legitimate mortgage foreclosure rescue, this type of fraud has grown remarkably over the last few years.

Lisa Madigan is going after fraudulent rescuers with a new law, The Mortgage Rescue Fraud Act, now known as Public Act 094-0822. Our Democratic State Senator Terry Link and Democratic State Rep. Eddie Washington were sponsors of the bills that became this law. Even with the new law, it is going to be a tough road. Housing costs are still high, jobs still insecure, costs still rising and there will always be people to take advantage of those hurting because of it. Foreclosures up and down our blocks are hurting our neighborhoods and families.

Another real estate problem that hurts our neighborhoods is loan fraud. Investors buy up units in new condos, lots in new subdivisions and even existing neighborhood housing. That alone is legal, but often the investors get into loan programs meant for owner/occupied properties by making false statements on loan documents. They often use straw people to act as purchasers then pay them off to leave. Sometimes, they are parts of larger schemes that enlist lower tiered partners to do the dirty work. Some of these folks don't even understand what they are getting themselves into, some do. There are several MOs. You can read about many of them at the Mortgage Fraud Blog. Apart from the obvious crime, the problem is that this type of fraud also tears apart neighborhoods by falsely increasing housing prices, then breaking up neighborhoods with foreclosures as the buyers abandon the properties and leave the loans unpaid.

The Democrats in Springfield have done a great job working to regulate and enforce against these frauds with the limited jurisdiction they have over the issue. The republican controlled federal government has done nothing more than toughen bankruptcy rules to favor the credit providers and reward them for making bad loans. Think about that if you are thinking about replacing your Democratic state rep with a republican, or Blagojevich with Topinka or if you are a Democrat, but supporting Mark Kirk.

Fraud and housing insecurity make up the real Mark Kirk/Bush Administration suburban strategy that sucks the prosperity out of the middle class and delivers it to the extremely wealthy based on lies and misrepresentations about national security and allocates pork projects to districts where republicans need help to get reelected. Kirk can cut ribbons all around the district for the projects he puts his name on, get 401Ks for every 2 year old in the district, increase the trappings of law and order and portray himself simply a nice moderate guy till the cows come home and it will never make up for his support of the republican economic and energy strategies that reward bad lending practices, encourage fraud, help to artificially increase housing costs, cause our children to leave the district in search of affordable housing, create job insecurity and increase prices and all in all break up our neighborhoods and our families.

Hurrah!!! It's there

The new and improved dansealsforcongress.com!!!

It is one of the best websites I have ever seen ever and Dan, he looks great. Just in time to lift my spirits.

I particularly like the new logo and the changing pictures. There are action features and even a convenient way to participate at 2:00 in the morning in your jammies.

Getoutahere now and go immediately to Dan's new site do not pass Go, do not collect $200, but make sure you donate $200 or more.

Mission Accomplished

No big shocker as Mark Kirk whips his buddies in the house for a vote that the Iraq war is a A-OK.

Now they can say they "debated" the war. No further mention of the dead, dying, starving, sweltering, stealing, lying, wasting..... necessary.

Mission Accomplished.

Your upgraded pay House in Action

Remember as you read this, and hopefully go to the record yourself for the entire debate (if you can call it that) the House just passed a pay raise for themselves. Also note that the EEOC budget was just cut, so if you have an employment discrimination issue, forgetaboutit.

Anyway, the great cheerlead for the Iraq war is up on the Congressional Record at pages H4024 - H 4123. All the buzzphrases are there Freedom, 9/11, evil, brave, nuclear....

Hasterdt quotes Reagan (finally a republican quotes a republican): Speaker of the House (Mr. HASTERT). Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, one of our greatest Presidents, Ronald Reagan, was fond of saying that ‘‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.’’ President Reagan’s wise words are still true today.

I think I'm going to break out into song..."and the rockets red glare...let freedom ring....(as long as they don't want accountability from us)"

Now the fear: Mr. HYDE. (or should we say Dr. Jekyll) "For if al Qaeda had had a nuclear device, there can be no doubt it would have used it on 9/11 and we would be mourning the death of 3 million Americans, not a tragic 3,000." Hyde again insinuated first that Saddam had nuclear weapons and second that there was a connection to Al Qaeda, while both assertion have been proven false.

On the other side Murtha spoke a lot and Waxman spoke about Halliburton. Here's Rep Waters getting it right and being a real patriot: "However, Congress has done virtually no oversight of this war, no hearing, no acknowledging the generals that are trying to tell us about Mr. Rumsfeld’s mismanagement of this war. We have not done the oversight, and today, we find that we have this debate. It is not sufficient, nor has it been properly characterized. This resolution we are debating is a sham. As a matter of fact, it is a trap. It is an attempt to force Democrats to sign on to a resolution that will do nothing to bring our troops home. Oh, they want to make us sound as if we are unpatriotic. They want to make us sound as if we do not support our troops. We love our troops. We are as patriotic as anybody, and so I would implore my colleagues not to get caught into this trap."

Here's Jan on what we've wasted and what we've lost: "DICK CHENEY said May 30, 2005, ‘‘I think they are in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.’’ And what happens to those experts who tell the truth? Are they heeded and embraced by the Bush administration? Hardly. Although it is now universally agreed we didn’t have enough troops to avoid the chaos and violence after the initial invasion, when the Army’s top general, Eric Shinseki, testified in February 2003 ‘‘something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers’’ would be necessary to achieve victory in Iraq,’’ he was immediately and publicly repudiated by Secretary Rumsfeld who said that ‘‘the idea it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark.’’ Shinseki was quietly ushered into retirement, and Secretary Rumsfeld remains in place leading the failed Bush administration policy in Iraq.

When Dr. Lawrence Lindsey, former assistant for economic policy to the President, told the Wall Street Journal in September 2002 that the war’s cost could reach $200 billion, he was fired by the President. Yet by the end of this year we will have spend $450 billion in Iraq. Some say at the end of the day the war will cost $1 trillion taxpayer dollars. Since the time the President announced on May 1, 2003 that ‘‘major combat operations in Iraq have ended,’’ more than 2,350 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives, and the President has not attended a single one of their funerals. And the United States is spending in excess of $8 billion a month to wage the war. That is $266 million a day, $11 million an hour, $185,000 a minute and $3,100 a second, every second for this war. Certainly we could have afforded body armor and proper Humvees for our soldiers.

We could have insured 165 million children for 1 year, provided more than 13 million American students with 4- year scholarships at public universities, fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 11 years, give basic immunization to every child in the world for 92 years, and I believe that would have bought us more security than invading Iraq has done."

The republicans speeches were chock full of 1930s imagery, unsubstantiated nuclear references, and repeats of old 9/11 lies. The Democrats tried to speak truth. Kirk was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, but voted with his party to allow this sham of a debate and trap as Rep. Waters put it. At least Murtha and others got a chance to put their arguments into record so when posterity asks where were the good real patriotic Americans when this went down, their grandchildren, living the lives of consumer/workers stuck in unending war for corporate profits, will see they spoke up.

Rah Rah Rah! We'll Win! Sis Boom Bah!

Rather than engaging in a real debate about our current situation and what to do next about Iraq, our republican congress had cheerleader tryouts on Thursday. Henry Hyde introduced and the House debated H.Res. 861 for TEN HOURS: Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary. Oh Goody. We'll win. No mention of how or by what means or at what cost. No mention of what winning actually means. It has dawned on me that the mission is accomplished as Bush said on the aircraft carrier back in 2003. He just failed to say what the mission was. The mission was not to oust Saddam and set up a democratic government. The mission was to get in there, control the oil to keep gas prices and oil company profits up, and stay permanently. Like the man said, Mission Accomplished.

As for Thursday's debate, Truth Out and Rawstory are reporting on a republican memo that went out on how they intend to "debate". They are supposed to mention 9/11 a lot, quote JFK (he's rolling in his grave about now, huh?), and use the Rovian same old same old "cut and run" revived as "resolve over retreat." The congressional record will be a sight to behold when it comes out.

What should they have discussed? Off the top of my head, this is what I can think of:

• Water and electricity for those poor folks (it's supposed to be 113 tomorrow, hotter over the weekend).
• Getting that oil production to pay for the reconstruction.
• A strategy for removing Al Qaeda that would have never been there to begin with had we not attacked. Finding Osama would be a plan.
• Renewing our national commitment to nuclear non-proliferation that historically worked very well according to Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• Providing the congressional oversight over the executive branch that was intended by the original version of the Constitution, not the new marked-up one they seem to be using.

It's about time we had some real debate on Iraq instead of a cheerleading session. As we hit the sad milestone of 2500 dead in Iraq, this team needs real strategy for a win win all around not rah rah rah sis boom bah...we win.

How to fund universal health care

I believe that the US should join the rest of the developed world in providing sensibly priced, single-payer health care to its residents. One way to do that would be to open up Medicare to the rest of the country as it was originally intended. There is another very similar plan endorsed by Physicials for a National Health Program. The latter is the plan endorsed by both Dan Seals and my cousin, David Gill, running in the Illinois 15th district. Both plans would allow the single-payer state system to negotiate fees for it's bulk customer base with health care providers and pharmaceutical companies. Both plans involve paying for the system with reduced tax cuts for the wealthy and a small payroll tax to take the place of the large medical bills faced by employers today.

I came up with another idea to help pay for this. It came to me watching the Jon Stewart show last night. I only caught part of it, the part where he was talking to Tim Russert about Iraq and all the lies that brought us to where we are today. Stewart brought up the false WMD claim, the false connections to Osama claim etc. etc. etc. and Russert just sat there with a dumb grin on his face refusing to acknowledge that we now know all of this, and much of it proclaimed by administration officials over the years on Russert's show, to be false. Still just the grin from Russert even as Stewart pushed. Then, I thought to myself, sure Russert won't acknowledge the lies because he made and probably continues to make a bundle off of them. That has been the bane of the US since 2001; too many folks stand to gain too much money from the lies.

So, how to fund health care. Sure, it would be best to end the needless and costly Iraq war and reverse tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans, but since no one will do that, how about a lie income tax. Tax 50% of the income people make from lies like claiming to have helped find the funding for local projects at various ribbon cutting ceremonies around the district when the state reps and your predecessor really did the work. The same rate should apply to those who benefit from others' lies and fail to bring out the truth. If the lies are doozies like the ones leading up to the death and destruction as we have seen in Iraq, the tax rate should be 75% of the income. These public liars, and their buddies who lie by omission, should not benefit from their lies and consequent pain and suffering that they have caused for the past 5 1/2 years. They should put the ill gotten gains to good use and fund our national health care system.

Congratulations Mark

Mark Kirk got a raise! He got an additional $3,300 and now makes $168,500. Too bad the rest of us cannot vote ourselves raises to help pay for the $3.00ish gasoline his party's secret energy policies have brought us.

This just in: While Mark and friends voted themselves a nice raise and now Mark can afford to buy Mrs. Kirk those Prada strappy sandals, the rest of us down here are seeing reduced wages, and higher costs. Don't take my word for it, click here.

Basically (for all those mothers who neither merge nor click):

• Median household income adjusted for inflation has fallen five years in a row.
• 46% of growth has been distributed as corporate profits.
• There are only 1.9% more jobs today than in March 2001.
• The poverty rate rose from 11.3% in 2000 to 12.7% in 2004.
• Family health costs rose 43-45% for married couples with children, single mothers, and young singles.

I don't think any of this is even taking into account recent price increases due to recent increased fuel costs. We're already seeing it in the grocery stores. All kidding aside, this isn't about Prada, it's about food, housing, and gas for the car for the vast number of folks whose buying power and negotiating power in the job market and just about every other market has been reduced along with their political power. All those folks who think that what goes on in Washington doesn't affect them are wrong and the proof is in these numbers. All those folks (sadly many women in my experience) who answer the phone bank calls and the door knocks saying that they are not interested because they are not political are suffering for their decision to not pay attention or care or often not bother to vote. They didn't care, so they lost out.

The goal of Bush/Cheney/Kirk regime is to keep those corporate profits rolling in and everything they have done from their first day in office was to create the current economic condition of the nation. The rest is not their concern. There is no incompetence here. They have accomplished their mission and the rest was simply not on the agenda. So the question I have today is this: Why would you vote to re-elect a candidate, or do nothing and let him be reelected by default, who doesn't think about you at all?

Forget the election, make them sing

Poster Jeffsters hid this comment in post from several days ago. I'm going to give him top billing today because he argues that we don't have the right to understand our representative's votes or actions:

I see no balanced substantive debate yet...lots of mud throwing, citing of voting records and critiques of the other guys public events but no real discussion of the issues or the alternatives.

Jeffsters doesn't think we should look at our own congressman's voting record or look at his actions. It's "mud throwing" to tell the truth about a vote and a pattern of voting or to point out that serious details were hidden from voters in favor of campaign slogans. Maybe Jeffsters, we should have both Kirk and Seals sing a la American Idol and choose from them that way. Seals is better looking and taller than Kirk, so maybe he should win on that alone or are you suggesting some sort of celebrity fight club?

Sorry, Jeffsters. Voters should know how their representative votes and how he presents himself at events because that tells the story about his representation of us. As for alternatives, you seem to have conveniently missed almost 2 year of posts about investing in education with emphasis on science and math, creating affordable housing, cleaning our environment, creating a health care system for health and not corporate profits, stopping predatory lending practices, ending our dependence on foreign oil, and leaving Iraq before we cause any more harm. Why don't you comment on any of those issues? Do tell why we should not have a sensible health care system that covers everyone and allows Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical prices as it was originally set up to do to save taxpayer money. Please explain why we cannot save our planet for subsequent generations and why we should teach religion over science and allow other nations to surpass us in innovation. Then tell us why my pet peave, predatory lending, is A-OK with you. Kirk never seems to have anything to say on those issues. Maybe you can speak for Kirk here and you are welcome to do so, but you'll have to make a much better argument than telling us that we should not look at his voting record. That is really what he wants so he can continue to get away with it and still portray himself as representative of our district, but it won't fly here.

Tidbits

1. Why didn't he just diagnose them from old, edited videotapes like he usually does? Bill Frist revealed in his new book:

Desperate, obsessed with my work, I visited the various animal shelters in the Boston suburbs, collecting cats, taking them home, treating them as pets for a few days, then carting them off to the lab to die in the interests of science. And medicine. And health care. And treatment of disease. And my project.

It was, of course, a heinous and dishonest thing to do, and I was totally schizoid about the entire matter. By day, I was little Billy Frist, the boy who lived on Bowling Avenue in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor because of his gentle father and a dog named Scratchy. By night, I was Dr. William Harrison Frist, future cardiothoracic surgeon, who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career. In short, I was going a little crazy.

Not the way to get support from Democat. Bet even the republicat is squirming at this one.

2. Is Project for the New American Century going out of business? Is its "mission" accomplished or are they crawling back to the rathole from whence they came? All in all it makes me wonder what the real mission was.

3. Wonder why neither Mark Kirk nor the media that reprinted his press release about his wonderful victory in killing the "Bridge to Nowhere" never mentioned that the Bridge to Nowhere was actually two Bridges to Somewhere? In addition to killing the bridge from Ketchikan to it's only airport, Kirk killed the proposed Knik Arm Bridge which was to provide access to Point MacKenzie, Matanuska-Susitna Borough and a more direct connection to AK-3, the major road to the inland and Fairbanks and to provide access from those areas to the port of Anchorage. Anchorage is sort of peninsula-like surrounded by water, a narrow passage to Kenai to the south and mountains (part of the Denali Preserve) to the north and east, and needs this access to the inland and surrounding boroughs to its northwest through Knik. It's sort of like saying Manhattan doesn't need the bridge to and from Brooklyn. I understand that the entire project was very expensive, but so is the Iraq war the reasons for which (conditions that Kirk assured us really existed) turned out to have been a pile of lies. I'd rather we helped out the Alaskans. I guess the real point is that the "Bridge to Nowhere" was not a bridge to nowhere at all, but two real projects to foster development and growth in Alaska. Why can't Kirk just say that and give real reasons why the investment in Alaskan development was not wise. Don't the voters deserve a little truth?

4. I hope Al Gore doesn't run in 2008 and it's not because I don't like him. I really do like him and think his new project, to train educators to give his global warming slide show around the country and around the world, is most statesmanlike. Gore is becoming a fine elder statesman and is not burdened by campaign financing so he can, gasp!, tell the truth.

5. Is anyone else wondering about all the new species being discovered lately and does anyone wonder why all those law and order type republicans cannot seem to keep the lid on crime nearly as well as the Clinton administration did?

6. Did anyone notice who sided with whom in Jones v. Flowers (no, not Paula and Jennifer!)? Apparently, Roberts sided with the liberals on the court in deciding that certified notice returned does not constitute due process, at least when it involves the state taking away someones property for unpaid taxes. Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy dissented. One of my friends, an expert on real property tax, said he was very disappointed in Robert's opinion because all we heard during his confirmation was how scholarly he was and what a great writer he was, and my friend found the opinion neither scholarly nor well written. You decide. Here's a sample of the opinion [notes added by me]:

We do not think that a person who actually desired to inform a real property owner of an impending tax sale of a house he owns would do nothing when a certified letter sent to the owner is returned unclaimed. If the Commissioner prepared a stack of letters to mail to delinquent taxpayers, handed them to the postman, and then watched as the departing postman accidentally dropped the letters down a storm drain, one would certainly expect the Commissioner's office to prepare a new stack of letters and send them again. [I would think he'd chase after the postman.] No one "desirous of actually informing" the owners would simply shrug his shoulders as the letters disappeared and say "I tried." [unless the statute says you can] Failure to follow up would be unreasonable, despite the fact that the letters were reasonably calculated to reach their intended recipients when delivered to the postman.

Here's the best line from Thomas' dissent:

The meaning of the Constitution should not turn on the antics of tax evaders and scofflaws. [So, doesn't that apply to Bush who thinks that the bills he signs into law do not apply to him?]

7. Here's an interesting thought from Church of the Churchless blog which I found when they quoted my article of Karl Popper and his theory of falsifiability earlier this year:

Fundamentalism takes many forms, and is defined in various ways. Scott Bidstrup says: In my view, a fundamentalist religion is a religion, any religion, that when confronted with a conflict between love, compassion and caring, and conformity to doctrine, will almost invariably choose the latter regardless of the effect it has on its followers or on the society of which it is a part.

The above reminded me of this article by Ron Miller of Common Ground in Deerfield and Lake Forest College and Reilly O'Connor. Miller and O'Connor view fundamentalism as static, selective in what portions of doctrine it accepts, and that it oversimplifies both traditions and reality. Seems to me it's religion doctored up to fit a pre-selected conclusion. I also wonder if fundamentalism is religion at all or a foregone conclusion favoring those in power portrayed as religion--worship of power?

Sunday afternoon at home with Al Gore, John Dean, Matt Stoller and Democat

The argument against net neutrality, allowing corporations to block websites, is a political loser according to Matt Stoller of MYDD. He told the YearlyKos attendees, "If you love dropped calls, you will love the non-neutral internet." It will irritate consumers. Matt, however, does not want us to be consumers. He wants us to be activists and fight for the open internet.

Basically, net neutrality means an open internet wherein you can access websites of your choice. The loss of net neutrality will allow corporations to control which Web sites get priority. Non- favored websites would become difficult, if not impossible, to call up. Mark Kirk voted against net neutrality last week.

This weekend was very important to illustrate what net neutrality means in real life. First, there was YearlyKos. I could not attend because I am too busy at work and I don't have the cash to blow on another trip to Vegas. I was just there anyway and didn't like it much with the heat and all. However, I was able to see Joe Wilson, Howard Dean, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid and Matt Stoller speak at YearlyKos from the comfort of my little office with the Democat sitting right here on my desktop sleepily opening and shutting her eyes.

Then, there was MoveOn's Al Gore teleconference call on global warming. You could telephone in, but you could not ask questions unless you were online. Al's doing fine. He has no plans to run for president, but he does plan on training others to give his slideshow and take it on the road. Someone from Chicago asked Al a good question. She asked what he would recommend to fight global warming, all politics aside. Gore said he'd eliminate subsidies for oil and coal that artificially enhance global warming pollution. He's also advocate substituting a CO2 tax for current taxes on our labor.

Gore also asked listeners to contact their representatives and ask them to take the warnings seriously and ultimately bring the US under the Kyoto protocol, actually, the successor to the original that is being worked out now, without the US at the table. Go do that, but remember that the point here is that I probably would not have been able to get on the internet version of the call if the internet was closed as the telecom companies propose, and as Mark Kirk supports.

After Al, I noticed that I still had time to jump over to the ACLU town hall meeting on their case against the NSA for their illegal use of wiretaps. I saw John Dean, former White House Counsel to Nixon, speaking to the crowd at Ann Arbor. He just wrote a new book titled Conservatives Without Conscience. Dean should know all about that having worked for Nixon. He believes that this white house is even worse than Nixon's and has said that they do absolutely nothing that is not for political gain. During his speech at the ACLU town hall meeting that I watched from my office with the Democat rummaging through some papers on my desk, Dean observed that the current ACLU case against the NSA could be dismissed for national security reasons, the same argument Nixon used to try to stop The New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. Does Dean want Americans to understand the gravity of the national security defense? Well, no. He wants Americans to understand just how frivolously it is used. During the Pentagon Papers case, Dean discussed it with the US attorney on the case for Nixon. The attorney making the national security argument that the Times should not be allowed to publish the Pentagon Papers had no clue whatsoever what items of national security were in the Pentagon Papers. Neither he, nor anyone working in the US attorneys office, ever saw them. No one had. They were making it all up. Good thing Judge Sirica did not let party politics get in the way of making a good legal decision and allowe publication to go forward. Now, we surely will not be so lucky as no decisions seem to be made by this republican controlled government that are devoid of party politics. It is likely that the decision to refuse to protect net neutrality will be made for reasons of party politics as well. republicans are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Americans because of the internet. They probably want everything about the internet except selling and buying gone.

If corporations that benefit from the corporate pandering and party politicking republican administration control the internet, there will be no Sunday afternoon internet interaction with Al Gore. There will be no internet town hall meetings with John Dean and the ACLU. We will be sold their corporate products made with our cheap labor and nothing more. The internet will be lost as a tool of democracy and without it, now that the mainstream media is gone, there will be nothing left but a sales pitch.

Kirkstats

Found this and it's kind of fun. It's contains some congressional statistics about Mark Kirk and compares him to the rest of the house. Here are some of the highlights or lowlights depending on your point of view:

• Missed Votes: 91 of 3107 Missed Votes Compared to Peers: Average
• Dead Bills: 37 Bills Still in Committee Compared to Peers: Very Poor
• Successful Bills: 0 of 42 Bills Enacted Compared to P