An issue close to my heart; the Voting Rights Act will come up for renewal soon, and you can expect to hear pandering from southern politicians on both sides of the aisle claiming that there’s no need to villainize the south any longer and the protections under the Voting Rights Act can be lifted, even as we have a great deal of proof to point to the fact that voters in the South, especially poor and minority voters, are being ushered away from the polls, and southern state legislatures are aggressively pursuing legislation that would make it harder for those folks to register to vote and exercise their right to vote.

The right to vote is still a right to be protected, and there are still people out there, the George Wallaces of today, who will go to no end to find the sneakiest and most underhanded way to keep the people from the polls. Representative Artur Davis, from Alabama, on the front lines of the battle to protect our right to vote and be counted, has some choice words on the subject in an editorial in yesterday’s The Hill newspaper.

[ Voting Rights Act is Still Needed to Build on Progress ]
Source: The Hill

It’s a shame that the House of Representatives, the so-called “people’s house” that has descended into a den of moronity in the past few years, had the opportunity to truly debate the reasons behind the war in Iraq, the amount it has cost the American people, ways to help and support our men and women in uniform who have been wounded, over 18,400 of them, and the families of the over 2500 who have been killed, but that wasn’t in the script for the Republican leadership in the House today. They claimed they would have an open and honest debate about the war, but instead they pulled a PR stunt, challenging Democrats and opposition politicians to vote for or against a resolution in “support” of the troops, and implicitly supporting the war and patting the President’s back.

Representative Maxine Waters, one of the few House members with the guts to stand up against the bullying tactics of the Republican house majority, had this to say about the ordeal:

Simply put, HR 861, the legislation offered by the majority for purpose of this debate, is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing, election-year pat on the back for an embattled president and a majority Republican party poised to lose control of the House of Representatives. The script for Thursday’s so-called debate has been playing out since the attacks on 9/11. Once again, Republicans will make every attempt to conflate the “global war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq—even after it has been repeatedly proven that there were no direct connections between Iraq and al-Qaida. In fact, all that these issues have in common is how badly the administration has bungled them.

Additionally, Republicans will accuse Democrats of wanting to “cut and run,” essentially abandoning the Iraqi people to bear the brutal insurgent attacks. They will call us unpatriotic and say that we do not support the U.S. troops—men and women whom the Bush administration has unjustifiably sent into harm’s way. All of these accusations are hollow diversions meant to prevent the American public from focusing on the fact that President Bush and congressional Republicans have failed to strengthen our homeland against another terrorist attack.

The right wing just can’t get the same old lines out of their head, can they? They’ve fed the American people the same lines, pissed on their faces and told us all it’s raining. Sorry guys, but we’re not buying it any more. No one’s saying “cut and run,” but we are saying “get it right and get out.”

[ The Iraq Non-Debate ]
Source: TomPaine.com

As if we really needed any additional authorities to tell us what a horrible and miserable failure the policies towards terror President Bush, the Administration, and Congressional Republicans have hatched up and carried out over the past several years. But even though we didn’t need it, a survey of 100 American foriegn-policy analysts came to the conclusion that the so-called “War on Terror” is a failure, and that American diplomatic efforts scored a 1.8 out of 10. But then again, I’m sure it’ll be labeled as more “liberal media,” even though you’d be hard pressed to find this piece making front page news in American publications. Rather, it’s our neighbors to the North in Canada, Toronto to be specific, who caught wind of the survey results.

Canada, who’s taking fire from American conservatives who are so short-sighted (you know the kind, the more they speak the dumber they sound) and complaining about lax security in Canada that allowed terrorists to plot attacks against them….that lax security that caught those terrorists in Toronto before they could carry out their attacks, had them under surveillance long before they were capable of their attack, and managed the risk involved with observing them and gathering information that would lead Canadian authorities to the terrorists’ brethren, yeah, that kind of lax security. The kind of lax security that did all of that without warrantless programs of spying on their own citizens, the kind of lax security that doesn’t involve inventing a war and then calling it “security,” essentially, the kind of security that caught their bad guys before they could do anything, as opposed to our supposedly super-tight security that pretends that we don’t have terrorists in our midst, can’t catch them to save their lives, and lets attacks on our soil occur.

So I’d warn conservatives trying to build some steam off of Canada’s terror success against making themselves look like fools, but to be honest, I don’t expect them to heed my warning-after all, making themselves look bad is what they do best.

Back to the topic of the piece however, American foriegn policy analysts turn the Administration’s policies around on them and point out that their current anti-terror policies have so far either focused on all the wrong nations, been a dismal failure at controlling terrorism and the growth of terror networks, or both.

[ War on Terror Called Failure ]
Source: The Toronto Star

2500 dead.

18,490 wounded.

[ US Military Deaths in Iraq Reach 2,500 ]
Source: The Boston Globe

Let me open with the actual intro to the article:

Sara Rich is the mother of an AWOL US soldier. Facing three deployments to Iraq in less than four years, Sara’s daughter Suzanne Swift searched her soul and decided that she could not go back to Iraq and continue to go out on what she calls “useless missions.” Nor could she continue to cope with the constant sexual harassment and fear of rape by her own officers and fellow soldiers that she had to endure. On Sunday night, the city police of Eugene, Oregon, without a warrant, raided Sara Rich’s home and took Suzanne away. She was taken to Fort Lewis, Washington. Her family is now asking for letters in support of Suzanne’s request for a medical or honorable discharge. Her family insists that Suzanne deserves the medical benefits due to any war veteran. Addresses are at the end of Sara Rich’s letter.

That’s the editors note before an empassioned plea by the author of the piece, Sara Rich, for compassion, understanding, and public outcry over the treatment of her daughter. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been down the military hard line before, and she’s a solider; her job is to kill-no matter what else they tell you in the recruiting office, or what you train to do when you’re out of Basic, you’re a solider, and in the end, if your officer and country tell you to pick up a gun and shoot those people over there, you do it. If you know you’re going to die in the process, and your commanders know you will, and you’re still told to do it, you do it. Being in the military all but forfeits your political and personal judgement when it comes to fighting in war. But that being said, the war in Iraq is a different kind of war. A war that’s polarized our country unlike any other. A war that’s changed American citizens, and a war that’s proven to us all that very often our young men and women in uniform don’t get what they’re sold in the recruiting office, and that everything can change depending on who wins an election.

I’m not saying that Suzanne Swift shouldn’t go to prison, or shouldn’t have to face what she’s done. She should-she’s a solider and she went AWOL. But the military, having known ahead of time that she had a hard time in Iraq, and facing the decision to send her back there for a third time, should have a: not sent her back at all, and b: listened to her when she complained about the conditions, the sexual harrassment, and her personal hopelessness. In essence, the military shouldn’t have been surprised in the least when this happened, and they could have taken steps before it did to avoid it, but they didn’t-they need warm bodies to fill the barracks in Iraq, and she was it. She should have been allowed to stay behind, if for no other reason than to be psychologically evaluated. Swift obviously has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, showed signs of it long before her redeployment orders came, and should be given a medical discharge immediately.

I feel for Swift, and her mother, and I worry that our military, stretched thin and full of men and women who have never seen war and signed on the dotted line not expecting to have to, fine men and women who are giving their lives, their limbs, and their sanity to fight a war that no one asked for, no one anticipated, and no one needed, is at the point where this is how commanders treat their soliders; this is how the military thanks you for serving faithfully, serving to your limit, but not being able to serve any more. With conditions like this, it’s no wonder that so many names of Iraqi towns have been embedded in the American conciousness: Ramadi. Hadditha. Fallujah.

How many more of our finest citizens, our best men and women, who have donned uniforms to protect us, will be sacrificed, for this foolishness before we either get out, or change course and try something that works? How many of them will come home in caskets that we won’t be allowed to see, how many of them will flood the operating rooms and wards of the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, to be treated for missing limbs and severe injuries? How many of them will lose their minds and sanity, and lose their health, both physically and mentally? How many, before this all ends?

While the President shakes hands with his pop-up government after a secret trip that no one could be told about (or else Baghdad would have been aflame before his arrival) and during a trip so sheltered and secret that he couldn’t possibly have left the Green Zone to see what the rest of the Iraqi people have to deal with, our men and women in uniform have to stand outside the castle walls in the cold, boots on the ground, dodging bullets and slowly losing their minds. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I support the troops. I support them so much I want each and every one of them home as soon as possible with their families and loved ones, safe from harm.

And as for the case of Suzanne Swift? I don’t begrudge her one bit. I think that she was led down this path, by commanders who wouldn’t listen, other soldiers who threatened her, and a chain of command that cared more for getting boots on the ground and hoping for stars on their shoulders than for the folks under their watch. I thought she should get her medical discharge, and she should be granted the benefits any war veteran gets-she’s been to Iraq twice now. Whether she recieves those benefits, and the treatment she needs from prison or on probation is up to the military to decide; she did break the law. But I would certainly say extenuating circumstances apply, and we should rise to the call to make both the military and the civilian leadership understand that.

[ Fear for My Daughter ]
Source: TruthOut

Sadly, the House of Representatives, voting mostly along party lines (Democrats for the measure, Republicans against), managed to defeat the net Neutrality amendment that would have guaranteed the lack of a multi-tiered internet under the hands of telecommunications companies that would charge certain companies and customers extra fees to ensure that they have the best possible connections to the services that they use and take advantage of, and that the companies that deliver content that requires bandwidth like Google, MySpace, Amazon, and eBay, wind up having to pay their service providers extra to ensure that they can get their content to the customers. The very real fear here is that a multi-tiered internet will appear, where access to some sites and some services, specifically those that don’t have a sweetheart deal with the telecomm companies, or with your particular internet service provider, will be blocked altogether or slowed so badly that you cannot access them. And on the other end, those same telecomms and Internet Service Providers will be heavy-handedly demanding more money from the Amazons and eBays of the world, saying that if those companies want their customers to have speedy and reliable connectiosn to the company websites and to do business with them, the telecomm companies want a cut of their profits.

The telecomm companies say that this is necessary for the growth and future of the internet, when in reality it’s a power grab for more money without increasing service. The government was to step in and demand that telecommunications companies and internet service providers practice “network neutrality,” meaning that they don’t prioritize connections and bandwidth based on sweetheart deals and special contracts between them and companies who rely on the internet to do business, thus retaining an internet that’s neutral in scope and no one company has an advantage over another just because they offered your internet service provider more money.

Luckily for us, the measure isn’t over yet, and there are several more opportunities for Congress to actually stand up and represent the will of the people on this issue. There’s more information on Thursday’s vote and the repurcussions at CNet.

[ House Rejects Net Neutrality Rules ]
Source: CNet

And rightfully so.

The notion that America should become some kind of conservative “nanny state” (as if it already weren’t) is absurd, and the notion of draining billions of dollars from the American treasury over even the first 10 years of the tax vanishing is absurd. What’s more absurd is the rhetoric that’s been coming out of the right wing over this ordeal. One Republican congressman even went so far as to say that the tax essentially tells small businesspeople and farmers that they can grow their business and then the government will cruise in and take it from them, a statement designed to rile up the “want everything but don’t want to pay for it” kind of conservatives who have a difficult time giving any money to anyone, much less the government. The 18 families who would have benefitted from the repeal of the estate tax, that same one-tenth of one percent of the American population, the ultra-rich, didn’t even have to campaign for the repeal of the tax; the right wing played on the ignorance of the American public and the general feeling that somehow everyone would have to pay the estate tax (which is absolutely false-only that one-tenth of one percent of American citizens will ever possibly have to face it for any reason) to generate support for the repeal.

But here’s the problem. If the estate tax were to vanish, billions of dollars would be gone from government coffers in the first decade of the tax being missing. Dollars that the government is relying on to pay for such extravagancies as the “war on terror,” among other escapades like congressional golf trips, but more importantly; homeland security, the paychecks of millions of federal workers, education, Medicare and Medicaid, disease and virus research, and more. So where would that money have to come from? You don’t honestly think that every federal agency would have to take such deep cuts and potentially job losses that would make the Republicans cringe, right? Well, that money would have to come out of the middle and lower classes; that’s right-creating that conservative nanny state we referred to, where the poorest Americans pay the most to make sure the rich have unfettered and complete access to the public services that all of us use (and in some cases more access to better services) but don’t have to pay for it. Perhaps in an incredibly rare moment of clarity, the congressional right realized what they were in for on both fronts, from job losses to a voter revolt due to increased taxation of the middle and lower classes, and decided to let the issue drop and let the Estate Tax stand.

[ G.O.P. Fails in Attempt to Repeal Estate Tax ]
Source: The New York Times

The only tool in the federal government’s arsenal left to monitor poverty levels and the effectiveness of social service programs is about to be phased out, if left to the Bush Administration. Perhaps what’s more alarming than this news is the fact that the President, who is continually crowing about phasing out and eliminating social service and “entitlement” programs that are ineffective, has managed to eliminate all of the surveys and periodic studies that would prove whether those programs are effective or ineffective. What does this mean? Essentially that any program that could possibly be painted as progressive (read: beneficial to the people, specifically the middle or lower classes) will be painted as ‘ineffective” and targeted for elimination, regardless of whether or not the program is actually doing people some good, or whether people have been relying on it to salvage their lives or make their lives better.

But the well-being of the American people has never been the interest of this Administration, so this shouldn’t come as any particular surprise. The more in the dark and disconnected the Administration and congressional Republicans can stay from the rest of the American people (read: reality) and closer they can buddy up with the lobbyists and corporations that fill their election coffers, the happier they are.

The Survey of Income and Program Participation is essentially the government’s only set of eyes to see if social programs as small as job training but as large as Medicaid and Social Security are actually working, helping people, or even being fleeced. But why wouldn’t the “small government Republicans” want to know if government is getting too big or if the American people are being fleeced? It would logically add more ammo to their belt when targeting programs for elimination, right? Well, that’s the problem-they don’t want to run the risk that these so-called “expensive” (expensive in comparison to what, the Iraq war? The Pentagon’s budget?) social programs are actually effective, and the last lifeline that many American citizens have to getting help in their communities. To them, that risk outweighs any possible benefits, and they can crow about how they’re shrinking government while serving their own interests by not just eliminating the Survey, but by haphazardly targeting programs they choose.

upporters say the 22-year-old survey has been crucial for measuring the effects of welfare changes, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other services. They argue it could be an important tool to evaluate how older people will be affected by the new Medicare drug plan.

Every four months, the same people are asked the same survey questions. The sample sizes have ranged from 14,000 to 36,700 households.

”This data is essential to the government in managing Social Security, disability payments, and assistance to needy families,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. ”This action by the administration gives the term ‘heartless’ a bad name.”

Heartless is an excellent description.

[ Democrats Try to Save Poverty Survey ]
Source: The Associated Press (courtesy of the New York Times)

Poor Arlen Specter. I mean it, actually-he’s one of the few Republicans with some measure of sense in the Senate, and more importantly one of the Republicans that doesn’t blindly follow the talking points and memos pushed out by the RNC and circulated by the party leadership and their corporate buddies. Specter’s been known to think for himself and do his own thing when it suits his own interests, or the interests of the folks of Pennsylvania. And now he’s being punished for it. Not that he hadn’t been punished for it in the past, because he most certainly has, but this time is of particular interest.

Specter has been at odds with the White House over the issue of President Bush’s and the NSA’s domestic program of spying in American citizens without a warrant or court authorization, a program that the Administration claims is legal but other organizations (like the American Bar Association) don’t seem to think so, and neither does Arlen Specter. Specter is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is essentially the only committee left in congress willing to take the president to task over the legality of the spying program, now that everyone else has given up, and the Attorney General has pulled the plug on an FBI probe into the program by claiming that FBI investigators couldn’t get the necessary security clearances to see the material involved. (a statement that, by the way, is unprescedented in the history of the FBI and the NSA, and a blatent attempt by the Attorney General and the Administration to keep any possible kind of oversight away from their precious wiretapping program. What do you have to hide, Mr. Bush?)

But the White House (and Vice President Cheney in particular) isn’t taking Specter’s challenges and desires to at the very least examine the legality of he program lying down. In fact, they decided to approach the Republicans on the judiciary committee to discuss congressional oversight and the examination of the program in order to establish whether it’s legal or illegal. Well, that is to say, all the Republicans on the judiciary committee save Arlen Specter. And you can bet Specter was pretty angry about Cheney blowing over his head to try and influence his committee. My question is how long and what will it take to make Specter step back in line, or will he continue his tradition of thinking for himself. We thought McCain could manage to use his own brain, but that’s turned up in our face, so only time will tell.

[ Specter's Uneasy Relationship With White House Is Revealed in a Letter to Cheney ]
Source: The New York Times

Joshua Holland, from AlterNet, caught up with one of our favorite economists, Dean Baker, to talk a little about his new book, The Conservative Nanny State and to hear what he has to say about debunking one of the fiscal conservatives’ most cherished myths, the notion of the “nanny state,” where free-market economics are being violated and regulated at the hands of fiscal liberals who wantto strip those who have earned their wealth and give it to people who haven’t earned it or don’t deserve it. The trouble, Baker says, is that it doesn’t work that way. And not only does it not work that way, the fiscal conservatives do their best to rig the rules of the game and make sure that the flow of wealth always ends up in their pockets and then when anyone raises an objection to the inherent unfairness, they claim that the kind of free-market economics that have done much to build the dynamic American economy are at risk. It’s just not the case, and it’s not right.

Baker also points out that progressives and liberals shouldn’t take the current economic environment as a given-healthy or unhealthy, we shouldn’t assume we have to work with what we’re given, and demand progress in economic policy as much as we demand progress in social policy, and that in taking the fiscal conservatives to task, we have a bit of catch up work to do in order to get ourselves back in the game and not sit on the sidelines while the rules of the American economic game are rigged.

[ The Myth of the Liberal Nanny State ]
Source: AlterNet