FBI Program Deputizes Corporations To Spy, Report On Workers, Among Others

If you haven't heard about InfraGard, a Bush Administration-FBI initiative to "fight the battle for homeland (in)security", you need to know. I've written about it in some detail at All Things Democrat, but you can also find the Democracy Now videocast of The Progressive's Matt Rothschild detailing it yesterday. Also, you can read his article here ("The FBI Deputizes Business").

At BEST, this is corporate favoritism and yet another program WE have to pay for with our tax dollars (many of these businesses involved with InfraGard not only pay minimal if any taxes, many are the recipients of huge rebates we also pay for).

At worst? Well, it staggers the imagination (like much of what the Bush Administration does).

Hey, Healthy People: You Cost TOO Much!

A new report says that healthy people who live longer COST society MORE than smokers and the obese. Oops.

Thankfully, I'm only moderately healthy and will probably die early so I won't cost too much. ;)

What *I* Want To Applaud On January 1st, 2009

OK, true, many of us look back on 2007 and ahead to the 365 days remaining to this year (it's a "leap" of 366, y'know) with jaded and anxious concern. Still, this does not stop any of us from hoping for better. What's more likely, however, to bring the better about is not wishful thinking but active doing, of putting our actions where our mouthes are, of becoming the kind of Americans and world citizens we want our neighbors to be.

Here's a short list of what I not only hope we'll be reporting on in the 2008 "year in review" next New Year's Day, but one I commit to do my best to bring about through my actions. Please share your thoughts, dreams, and promised actions here in comments, too.

10. Americans have turned OFF "reality TV" and started to seriously educate themselves both in history AND current events, about the U.S. Constitution and the ways the Bush crew have ravaged it, how our founding fathers EXPECTED us each as citizens to conduct ourselves and how we can make that into a reality NOW.

9. Not only did war with Iran NOT happen, but our troops and mercenaries like Blackwater are booked on flights out of Iraq if they are not already home.

8. A GOOD candidate will have won the 2008 presidential election fairly and honestly (something that did not happen in 2000 or 2004) while legitimate registered American voters are NOT kept from casting their ballots - or having their votes counted - by the dirty tricks perpetrated in the past.

7. Charges will be leveled and full and fair trials held to determine the guilt of the entire Bush Administration re: treason and high crimes and misdemeanors.

6. Thanks to Americans who will not ALLOW it, torture, "renditions", holding people without ever filing charges against them, etc., will no longer be permitted while Guantanamo Bay and all the secret prisons both here in the U.S. and throughout the world are closed for good.

5. Blackwater, Halliburton and its subsidiaries, Bechtel, et al, will be forced to repay American taxpayers and the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere money they took for criminal acts of negligence and murder; they will also be prohibited from ever holding another government contract.

4. A grievous wrong will be corrected that allows corporations to be treated to the rights of ordinary citizens while citizens are denied protection from the willful destructive acts of these companies.

3. These disastrous free trade agreements will be rendered null and void.

2. We'll be on our way to intelligent, inclusive, and actually useful universal health care for all Americans.

1. Each of us will take our role as citizens in a democracy very seriously and act accordingly.

Financing Tax Cuts for Billionaires And Corporate Welfare With Lives of Sick Kids

As promised, President Bush - who has never met a tax cut for the wealthiest or a way to have taxpayers foot the bill for mega corporations such as making Americans pay for oil industry refineries at a time when energy companies are seeing their most massive profits EVER - has vetoed the Congressional bill which would have allowed more kids to be covered by health care insurance under SCHIP.

Calling this disgusting and unconscionable simply does not begin to describe this.

Think about this: thousands if not tens of thousands of kids could be covered SIMPLY for the cost of what taxpayers will be expected to pony up so that Jenna (the even dumber Bush twin) can get married at the White House. Guess Bush has his priorities straight.

"Out of The Mouths of Blabbering Boobs & Bushies"

With so much bad news - from the economy to the declaration that we're having our deadliest years E-V-E-R in both Iraq and Afghanistan to a host of other awfuls, the Bushies have made a few really TELLING declarations in the past week that are worthy of note.

First, there was Bush's insistence that anything Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf wanted to do to for his country was A-OK with Bush. But that's not quite the NEWS. Bush, when asked if it was appropriate for Musharraf to claim the presidency when he came to power through a military coupe with Musharraf heading the military at the time, Bush comes out with:

Can a leader run both the military AND be president of his country at the same time? Of course not!

Uh.... Houston to the president: YOU ostensibly run the military as commander in cheat.. uh chief WHILE you are also supposedly president.

Then there's White House spokesvermin Dana Perino, Tony Snow(job)'s even sorrier replacement who, when asked if it was appropriate for any country's leadership to choose arbitrarily to end his/her nation's democracy and civil liberties in the name of protecting its citizens from terrorism, said NO!

But all the Bushies have done, since even before Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, is spy upon us as its citizens without ANY proof any of us is jeopardizing national security, to wiretap and remove constitutionally protected liberties, all in the name of "homeland security." In fact, in the same week Perino uttered this startling declaration (and removing our liberties have NOT made us any safer, I must add), the Bushies had several new initiatives underway to snoop upon us without due cause.

Stop the insanity, people!

Another Bushie War, on Americans: More Senseless War on Drugs, VT Style

When the Bushie Republican Governor of Vermont didn't like that a (Democrat, I believe) lawyer and part-time judge didn't get serious prison time for possession of marijuana, he didn't just get mad. No, Jim Douglas ordered all state law enforcement officials to send marijuana (NOT heroin, NOT cocaine, NOT methamphetamine) cases to the FEDS directly, bypassing local and state courts.

Now, I'm not excusing the woman lawyer/judge who as an officer of the court certainly knows basic law. And yeah, 2.5 lbs DOES sound like a lot (except that drug cops are taught to pad the weight anyway possible and go to some truly ridiculous extremes to do so, often at the behest of higher ups and prosecutors who want to hit heavier charges as well as confiscate property).

But what the fuck is going on here? The War on Drugs has been such a miserable failure. And if you want proof, look at the Miserable Failure in the White House right now, a cokehead drunk with delusions of grandeur who actually thinks he's president when, you know, it's really Dick Cheney. I'm tired of fighting a war on Americans who as adults can make their own choices for what they consume, good or bad. If being a Bill O'Reilly isn't a federal offense (yet offensive, nonetheless), being a pothead shouldn't be either, I would think. And I say that as someone who hasn't used in God... I can't tell you how long.

No less than the Times-Argus, the Barre-Montpelier, Vermont newspaper that very few accuse of being a liberal rag, is kind of aghast at what Douglas is doing. And ALL American taxpayers should be: it's taking a local problem and, for the War on Drugs - and the war for the Bushie-style Ego, dumping it on feds that apparently need to focus on otherwise law-abiding potheads rather than on Bush corruption and Osama bin Laden and company.

From Surplus To Deeper In Debt Than EVER: The Bush Economy

Well, Bush managed to push us $9 trillion in debt (and some economic forecasters say this is nowhere near how much we owe since much is still hidden from accounting eyes).

Remember the surplus Bill Clinton left us with?

No?

Ah, that’s because of the 7 years of Bush who can veto health care for kids but demands tax breaks for Dick Cheney and friends.

Oh, and you likely owe at least $32K grand per person in your household for the “war that will pay for itself, guaranteed! cakewalk” called Iraq”.

Sorry, no checks. Only blood and sweat and your hopes and dreams are tender we accept, please.

Homelessness And Vets: More Than Just A Crying Shame

With a new study out that shows that American veterans account for 25% of the country's homeless comes two questions that are far more than academic:

1) What do we do to our soldiers that they end up this way?
2) Why are so many Americans now homeless - and many of them are homeless WHILE working more than one job because housing here is so expensive - and why are we allowing the numbers to soar higher each and every day?

Other stats show that we have NEVER seen an epidemic of homelessness like this among people WHO WORK, who pay taxes. So why under Bush has this flourished?

Well, I know the answer to that.

Hallelujah and Thank You, CREW!

Buzzflash reports that CREW is launching a much-needed online site specifically to help us research government documents: Governmentdocs.org.

Flag Day - Don't Wave It, SAVE It

I've grown to have mixed feelings about Flag Day (today) because it always seems like all the wrong people wave the American flag and proclaim it as their own and then deny its "rightful" ownership by those more committed to the ideals on which this country was founded. HOWEVER...

Today, perhaps we ALL need to commit at least ONE act to restore the fundamental principles for which we love our country which provides the underlying value which the American flag symbolizes. If all this flag symbolizes is greed and hypocrisy and exclusionism and brutality, then the flag means nothing at all. So we must make our flag symbolize what it should, rather than what the Bushies and the rest have done to shat upon our land.

Write or call your Congress critters and tell them you're sick of having them in thrall to the Bush Right Wing. Stand up for universal health care or Immigration Reform (our founding fathers did NOT limit who could come) or the homeless or the poor (and remember, many of the homeless today HAVE a job; but one - or two or three - job in many sectors does NOT always guarantee Americans a place they can live).

Stand up today. Don't wave the flag until you've done your very best to try to ensure a change for the better, back to the basics of what our founding fathers (and the women who sacrificed behind them) envisioned. Take our country back for you, your family, and for every other American already here or to be born or to immigrate here.

And if you're smart - and I bet you are - you won't stop at just Flag Day. Do your best again tomorrow, and the weekend, and Monday, and... you get my drift.

"The Price Of Citizenship"

While military industrial complex businesses like Halliburton have set up a mail drop only in the Cayman Islands JUST to avoid taxes payment of appropriate taxes to the American/federal government/IRS, Prospect offers a recommendation that the ultra-rich (and the mega corps they own) lose U.S. citizenship :

"When the super-rich use offshore tax havens to avoid paying what they owe in taxes, the consequence ought to be the loss of their U.S. citizenship."

Let me propose an amendment: defense contractors who are American in nature CANNOT bid for contracts UNLESS they not only pay their share of the taxes we mere mortals already do; they also must be up-to-date with their tax payments.

A couple of years ago, there was quite a story about how many "favored" Bush no-bid defense contractors were in default for both very large sums of money due to the feds and sometimes for years at a time. Yet they were being pretty promptly handed checks for their invoices, as if the feds "overlooked" their whopping defaults to the taxmen.

The Best Iraqi Army American Taxpayers Can Buy And Insurgents Can Kill

As part of his "surge" (aka "escalation) in Iraq, President George W. Bush is using $41 billion (at least, that's all he has requested so far) to recruit and train members of the "new" Iraqi Army.

For argument's sake, let's for the moment put aside these small but weighty details:

• We've been trying to create an Iraqi military for several years now and it hasn't exactly worked
• Scads of Iraqi soldiers - and their colleagues, the Iraqi police - are frequently killed the day they register OR the day they graduate (or anytime in between)
• These same uniformed Iraqis frequently see their homes and families badly injured or outright destroyed in retribution for their "loyalty" to the Bush occupation
• Iraqi civilians and experts tell us that those Iraqi soldiers/cops who DO survive seem to be aligning themselves with torture and death squads

With these nasty, bloody details aside, consider this: for a force of just 40,000 Iraqi soldiers, this means American taxpayers will shell out about $350K to train and prep EACH and EVERY one of these soldiers.

Sound odd to you?

And, mind you, I haven't even factored in here all the graft and sweetheart contracts that adhere themselves to each and every single operation the Bushies become involved in with Iraq. In other words, the total per head fee could end up much higher (maybe a half million per, at the very least) and the number of trained (and surviving) soldiers might show up as far lower.