run with it

Limbaugh is in Charge

2009-02-04T14:40:00.003-08:00

I'm pissed off at the Republicans. I hope the party goes extinct. Really. because I don't believe they have the best interests of the country at heart.

Actually let me rephrase that, what's best for the the political party is often bad for the country. The government has to build consensus in order to get anything done, but the party loyalist is interested in conflict, making the other team look bad. You can't govern in that context. You can't be a partisan loyalist and a patriot at the same time.

For America's sake, I hope they actually are patriots, and I'm trying to understand why they act this way.

Why are they so divisive, why are they so misleading, why do they refuse to compromise?

In case you missed it, no Republicans in the house of Representatives voted for the economic recovery package. What's up with the herd of opposition?

If you are working on some legislation, you propose an idea or you advocate for some changes, and when those changes make it into the final bill you usually vote for it. The democrats took out a bunch of 'liberal' provisions and 'wasteful spending'. The Democrats compromised, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public trusts the ideas of Democrats when it comes to the economy.

The republicans got a lot of what they wanted, much more than they ever gave the Democrats. But not a single house republican voted for the economic recovery bill. You'll see the republicans all over the media criticizing the bill, and offering no suggestions for improving it, except tax cuts or reducing the price tag (both of which would make the bill less effective).

Why?

I have a few ideas.

Maybe it's the permanent campaign mentality. Your team must win, and the other team must lose. Therefore the other team can absolutely never have a good idea, unless they agree with you of course. And when they agree with you, you get to say I told you so and call them weak.

Maybe it's their conservative market philosophy of self-interest spilling over into everyday life. The 'invisible hand' of the market, where if everyone follows their own rational self-interest, we magically end up with the best collective solution too. So they are all looking out for their own self interest first and foremost. Which I guess means winning elections, hoarding power, making lots of money, and get lots of campaign contributions and political favors.

Maybe redistricting and gerrymandering plays a role too. House members represent little pieces of a state, so they put the democrats on democratic pieces and the republicans on republican pieces. So the voters in their district largely prefer to keep the same party every year. Their seats are in safe Republican territory, they don't have to fear running against a Democrat (there usually is none, the incumbent is unopposed anyway) So the only thing they have to worry about is another Republican challenging them in the primary. And they only way that could happen is if the incumbent pisses of his donors, and they fund the opposition instead.

hmmm, following the logic in that last one, I guess it's about the money?

well none of those are patriotic reasons, but they seem the most logical to me. I mean, we've tried tax cuts for 8 years, did George "the king of tax cuts" Bush miss that one essential tax cut that will fix all our problems?

Maybe the Senate won't be so confrontational. They each represent an entire state, which is more politically diverse than a house district. and they also have more time between elections. Maybe they'll act more like statesmen, then their brothers in the House who look like prep school punks.

I doubt the Senate would filibuster, this is a popular bill, and they can't afford to slow it down. Especially after Obama has shown them so much compromise and respect (especially compared to the last 20 years).

Let them vote against it, and watch in horror when it passes and actually puts people back to work. Then all the campaign commercials in 2010 will ominously say "he voted against Obama's recovery package. Wrong on the economy, wrong for America"

State of Denial: Two months before 9/11, Rice gave the 'brush-off' to 'impending terrorist attack' warning

2006-09-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

State of Denial: Two months before 9/11, Rice gave the 'brush-off' to 'impending terrorist attack' warning

Ron Brynaert
Published: Saturday September 30, 2006
From Raw Story

(Update: Former Counsel to the 9/11 Commission suggests that "[v]ery possibly, someone committed a crime" by engaging in a "cover-up" of the warning)

According to a new book written by Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, two months before the September 11 attacks, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the "brush-off" to an "impending terrorist attack" warning by former C.I.A. director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism coordinator.

An article in Friday's New York Times first mentioned the warning, and a front page book review of Woodward's State of Denial in Saturday's edition provides more details.

"On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack," David E. Sanger reported on Friday. "But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously."

Sanger also reported that Tenet told Woodward that before 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was "impeding" efforts to catch Osama bin Laden.

"Mr. Woodward writes that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Tenet believed that Mr. Rumsfeld was impeding the effort to develop a coherent strategy to capture or kill Osama bin Laden," wrote Sanger. "Mr. Rumsfeld questioned the electronic signals from terrorism suspects that the National Security Agency had been intercepting, wondering whether they might be part of an elaborate deception plan by Al Qaeda."

Saturday's New York Times review claims that in Woodward's book, Rice "is depicted as a presidential enabler, ineffectual at her job of coordinating interagency strategy and planning."

"For instance, Mr. Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism coordinator, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice to warn her of mounting intelligence about an impending terrorist attack, but came away feeling they’d been given 'the brush-off' — a revealing encounter, given Ms. Rice’s recent comments, rebutting former President Bill Clinton’s allegations that the Bush administration had failed to pursue counterterrorism measures aggressively before 9/11," writes Michiko Kakutani.

Saturday's Washington Post has more details regarding the meeting.

"The book also reports that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, grew so concerned in the summer of 2001 about a possible al-Qaeda attack that they drove straight to the White House to get high-level attention," Peter Baker reports for the Post.

"Tenet called Rice, then the national security adviser, from his car to ask to see her, in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression. But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported," the article continues. "Rice, they thought, did not seem to feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for an ongoing policy review."

Excerpts from Post article:
#

The report of such a meeting takes on heightened importance after former president Bill Clinton said this week that the Bush team did not do enough to try to kill Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) said her husband would have paid more attention to warnings of a possible attack than Bush did. Rice fired back on behalf of the current president, saying the Bush administration "was at least as aggressive" in eight months as President Clinton had been in eight years.

The July 10 meeting of Rice, Tenet and Black went unmentioned in various investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, and Woodward wrote that Black "felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn't want to know about."

Jamie S. Gorelick, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, said she checked with commission staff members who told her investigators were never told about a July 10 meeting. "We didn't know about the meeting itself," she said. "I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it."

White House and State Department officials yesterday confirmed that the July 10 meeting took place, although they took issue with Woodward's portrayal of its results. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, responding on behalf of Rice, said Tenet and Black had never publicly expressed any frustration with her response.

"This is the first time these thoughts and feelings associated with that meeting have been expressed," McCormack said. "People are free to revise and extend their remarks, but that is certainly not the story that was told to the 9/11 commission."
#

FULL POST ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
'This is going to be the big one'

Another Post article slated for Sunday's edition provides even more details.

"For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders, called "findings," that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden," the uncredited Post article reports. "Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an 'out of cycle' session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention."

J. Cofer Black later said that "[t]he only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

Excerpts from Sunday's Post article:
#

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? Perhaps, he said, it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.

Tenet had the National Security Agency review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

....

Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. "Adults should not have a system like this," he said later.
#

An "editor's note" appended to the end of the article notes that "[h]ow much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's 'neocons' and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks."

"Rice responded in an interview that 'what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,'" the editor's note continues.

FULL SUNDAY WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE AT THIS LINK
'Very possibly, someone committed a crime'

Saturday night at Think Progress, former Counsel to the 9/11 Commission Peter Rundlet guest-blogged a post called "Bush Officials May Have Covered Up Rice-Tenet Meeting From 9/11 Commission."

"Most of the world has now seen the infamous picture of President Bush tending to his ranch on August 6, 2001, the day he received the ultra-classified Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) that included a report entitled 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US,'" Rundlet blogs. "And most Americans have also heard of the so-called 'Phoenix Memo' that an FBI agent in Phoenix sent to FBI headquarters on July 10, 2001, which advised of the 'possibility of a coordinated effort' by bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation schools."

But Rundlet writes that a "mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame" him when he read about Tenet's "special surprise visit" to see Rice in July of 2001.

"If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know," writes Rundlet.

"Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation — questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the Commission been told about this significant meeting," adds Rundlet. "Suspiciously, the Commissioners and the staff investigating the administration’s actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting."

Rundlet suggests that the "withholding of information" from the Commission may constitute a crime, and scoffs at Cofer's excuse in Woodward's book.

"Was it covered up?" asks Rundlet. "It is hard to come to a different conclusion."

"If one could suspend disbelief to accept that all three officials forgot about the meeting when they were interviewed, then one possibility is that the memory of one of them was later jogged by notes or documents that describe the meeting," Rundlet continues. "If such documents exist, the 9/11 Commission should have seen them."

Rundlet quotes a line from Woodward's book which he says shows how "Black exonerates them all."

"Though the investigators had access to all the paperwork about the meeting, Black felt there were things the commissions wanted to know about and things they didn’t want to know about," wrote Woodward in the third volume of Bush at War.

"The notion that both the 9/11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry that investigated the intelligence prior to 9/11 did not want to know about such essential information is simply absurd," writes Rundlet. "At a minimum, the withholding of information about this meeting is an outrage."

"Very possibly, someone committed a crime," Rundlet concludes. "And worst of all, they failed to stop the plot."

RUNDLET'S ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT THIS LINK
White House: Five Key Myths in Book

On Saturday, the White House "went on the offensive," Caren Bohan reported for Reuters.

In the latest edition in its "Setting the Record Straight" series which uses official statements and media accounts it favors to counter articles in the press or Democratic arguments, the White House lists "Five Key Myths in Woodward's Book." The first "Setting the Record Straight" posted in February of 2005 took on a Washington Post article which reported that a Bush plan would result in participants forfeiting part of their retirement account profits, an assertion the White House blasted as "flat wrong."

To counter the third "myth," the White House presents the "fact" that "according to State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, the recollections portrayed by Woodward do not reflect Tenet and Black's 9/11 Commission Testimony," then quotes from another Times article written by Sanger.

"But Rice and other State Department officials denied [Woodward's claim], noting that the report of the Sept. 11 commission, which had sworn testimony from Tenet and others at the meeting, made no mention of the July 10 encounter," wrote Sanger. "'The recollections as portrayed in the Woodward book in no way reflect the public and private testimony under oath of those individuals to the 9/11 commission,' said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman."

The full list of "five myths" can be read at Whitehouse.gov.

Rushing Off a Cliff

2006-09-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

Rushing Off a Cliff

Ny Times 9/28/2006
Editorial

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

D.C. corruption eruption

2006-09-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

D.C. Corruption Eruption

FBI forced to triple fraud probe squads to keep up

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - There is so much political corruption on Capitol Hill that the FBI has had to triple the number of squads investigating lobbyists, lawmakers and influence peddlers, the Daily News has learned.

For decades, only one squad in Washington handled corruption cases because the crimes were seen as local offenses handled by FBI field offices in lawmakers' home districts.

But in recent years, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and other abuses of power and privilege have prompted the FBI to assign 37 agents full-time to three new squads in an office near Capitol Hill.

FBI Assistant Director Chip Burrus told The News yesterday that he wants to detail even more agents to the Washington field office for a fourth corruption squad because so much wrongdoing is being uncovered.

"Traditionally, a congressional bribery case might be conducted on Main Street U.S.A., but a lot of the stuff we're finding these days is here in Washington," said Burrus, who heads the FBI's criminal division.

He said typical crimes involve lawmakers' illegal interactions with lobbyists and "people who have a lot of savvy about how the congressional process works and appropriations."

Plus, the electronic and legislative paper trail that winds up as evidence is in Washington, as Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and ex-Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-Calif.) can attest.

Ney has agreed to plead guilty to corruption charges. Cunningham was sentenced to eight years in the slammer for taking bribes.

Two years ago, only 400 agents worked on public corruption cases. Now, 615 agents nationwide - including 30 in New York - are trying to nail public servants for betraying the public trust in 2,200 ongoing cases.

A recent FBI search of the Alaska Statehouse was a first of its kind.

In Washington, agents conducted unprecedented searches of the offices of the CIA's third-ranking executive and the House office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.).

Both stemmed from bribery allegations.

Burrus wouldn't speculate about why there is so much graft, but said, "We have to pull the whole weed up or it's just going to grow back again."

Originally published on September 19, 2006

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel

2006-09-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel
Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A17

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to build nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that "incorrect," noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat." Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was "clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on." He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report "took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire -- and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain -- than they are."

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised "concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program." The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an "unstated" policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly "outrageous and dishonest," according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.

The intelligence community believes North Korea is trying to acquire an enrichment capability but has no proof that an enrichment facility has been built, the officials said.

Ask an Iraqi War Veteran Who Supports the Troops

2006-09-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

CA-04: Ask an Iraqi War Veteran Who Supports the Troops? Certainly Not Doolittle.

by Charlie Brown for Congress
Tue Sep 05, 2006 at 12:49:43 PM PDT

Hawkish Members of Congress who never served one day in uniform (like my opponent John Doolittle) like to equate speaking out against the mistakes and missteps of this Administration on matters of national security with "not supporting the troops." Exhibit A is Doolittle's most recent column on the subject.

Like his "stay the course" colleagues, Doolittle's hopeless strategy here is to try and distract voters from his hypocritical record on the subject by smearing his opponents. Unfortunately, no amount of taxpayer funded campaign mailers will change the fact that he voted to send our troops to war in Iraq without a plan, proper equipment, or sound intelligence. It won't change the growing tensions in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and elsewhere that have occurred under John Doolittle's watch. And it certainly won't change the fact that he had the second worst record in the entire House of Representatives on Veterans issues in the 109th Congress (per Disabled American Veterans).

I wasn't the only one who noticed. My son, an Iraqi War Veteran and Air Force Captain who co-piloted Doolittle from Baghdad to Tal-Afar back in February took exception to Doolittle's recent column while home a few weeks ago on leave. His response to Doolittle is below, from the Sept. 5th edition of the Roseville Press-Tribune.

DOOLITTLE KNOWS VERY LITTLE ABOUT "SUPPORTING THE TROOPS"
I read Congressmen Doolittle's recent Op-Ed ("Support Our Troops, Don't Exploit Them") while home from duty overseas. As an Iraq War veteran, I found his claims of support for our military men and women, and his comments about Charlie Brown infuriating.
Doolittle suggests that if you do not agree with the political decision to go to war, then you do not support the troops. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I've traveled all over this country, and met people both for and against the war. Regardless of which side they fall on, everyone I meet supports the warriors. Many send care packages, body armor and helmets. Others advocate for veterans rights or volunteer to help homeless veterans and families coping with the absence of a loved one. Actions speak louder than words.
Career politicians like Doolittle say they support us, because that's all they can do. Yet their voting records, official actions, and appalling misuse of taxpayer dollars tell a very different story. Veterans, both past and present, are not fooled by the empty rhetoric.
How many vehicle armor plates could "fiscally conservative" Doolittle have bought with the taxpayer money he wasted sending out campaign mailers in August? How many sets of body armor could have been bought with his $1,000 per month taxpayer subsidized car lease? Why did Doolittle vote to allow more than $400 million in VA funding to be cut from a recent appropriations bill so that $700 million could be spent to move railroad tracks closer to casinos in Mississippi? And, would someone who "supports the troops" blow off a vote on VA benefits to attend a fundraiser with VP Cheney? Was it because he pocketed 15% from the event?
If John Doolittle really "supports the troops," why won't he give the dirty money that he's taken from convicted felons to one of the many charities that serve veterans in need? He can't possibly need the money--he already earns more than 4 times as much as the average soldier in Iraq.
Perhaps if Doolittle didn't get all those military deferments, he would understand what it's like to serve, and what soldiers see. Perhaps then, he could tell the difference between giving troops lip service and truly supporting them.
That's why I couldn't be prouder of my father Charlie Brown. He's dedicated his life to defending America, leading with honor, and standing up for veterans.
Doolittle's column is as disingenuous as his recent trip to Iraq---desperate attempts to distract the public from a record not worth running on, and growing scrutiny of his possible criminal acts.
Sorry Mr. Doolittle, but-when it comes to "supporting the troops," Charlie Brown is way out of your league.
-Jeff Brown, Ramstein AB, Germany"

Near the close of my 26 year Air Force career, I served two rotations coordinating surveillance flights over Iraq's "No Fly Zones" (mid 1990's). I attended the General's briefings every morning, spoke with intelligence officers, and we regularly discussed what we would target if we went to war with Iraq the next day. As I've reported on many occasions, no one was worried about WMD during those times, because we knew those programs had been shut down.

Accordingly, I spoke out early and often against the false assertions used to justify the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Now that we are there, I've consistently called for a timetable for re-deploying our troops elsewhere, turning over authority to Iraqis, and reducing the suspicion of occupation that is fueling insurgent violence and civil war. And, I support an immediate end to the "make it up as we go along" security strategy that has so dangerously isolated our country from the allies around the world that are needed to win a Global War on Terror. Most importantly, I recognize that when it comes to keeping our promise to veterans, the true measure of leadership is performance--not empty rhetoric. And the only acceptable result is "no one left behind."

Only 63 days left until election day. It's well past time for a change.

You can learn more about the campaign by clicking here.

You can make a contribution to our cause by clicking here.

- Charlie

Food for Thought

2006-09-03T18:57:00.000-07:00

I found this post through the web of the internet and thought it was a rare and clever perspective.

Here is the original post on MySpace

An Open Letter To Three Preceding Generations

To Whom It May Concern,

I would like to thank the Greatest Generation, The Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers, for providing me with this glorious world I have recently inherited. There are so many of you that by about 2025 people over the age of 55 will probably make up about 1/3 of the country. Soon enough, the Baby Boomers will be retiring and the children of the hippies, Gen X'ers and Generation Yers will be taking the horse by the reins, and we will hopefully lead the country as well as you have. Thanks for the honor, we will make you proud.

Oh wait, I just looked the horse in the mouth, and it might as well be a dead mare, since it comes with an $8.5 TRILLION NATIONAL DEBT, and in New Jersey she comes with an extra $29 BILLION IN STATE DEBT.

It seems to me like you guys threw a big party, made a huge mess, and now you guys are going to be retiring, shipping off to Florida, and leaving us with a huge mess to deal with. A nice analogy for this situation would be that you're leaving me to foot the bill for your life-long kegger. Thanks guys, I only wish I could pay you back, someway, somehow.

Forgive me for being more than a little angry about you guys (as a collective) taking it upon yourselves to make sure you take it easy. After all, let us be honest here, the generation before you survived the Great Depression, fought World War II and the Korean War and made America what it was, and theyre moving out of existence as we speak. The Silent Generation grew up during the great depression and, sat back and enjoyed the post-WWII prosperity. But what can we expect from a generation like the Baby Boomers that has never really had to work for their holdings. You were born into fabulous wealth, the likes of which the world has never seen and lived what became the "American Dream" as many of you lived in plush homes and had hard working parents. You lived in the most stable society in the world with a very firm set of social mores and order. Then, your generation challenged the established order, throwing out the old ways with a new way of doing things, with high tech, high energy, low cost, low effort lives. The boomers survived the Vietnam War and weathered the gas shortages and recessions of the 70s and 80s. You pioneered the disposable society, the fast food nation, basically took the Free Market to a whole different level.

Through all of this, you have all made sure to that you had everything you needed and everything you desired. You made sure that the evil, greedy, power hungry government doesn't get a nickel of YOUR hard earned money. You managed to accomplish this by opposing every measure to raise taxes and by voting out anyone who actually had the utter gall to raise taxes. But you sadly lacked the will, the vision and the energy to do the same for anyone who didn't bother to balance a budget.

I have a real problem with this because in your short sightedness you didn't bother to look down the road to the foreseeable future where you would actually have to pay for those unbalanced budgets. You didn't seem to realize in all of your infinite wisdom that when you borrow money from somebody, you have to pay them back, with considerable interest.

Between 1974 and 1997, the Federal Government ran 23 years of consecutive deficits. If any average American citizen spent more money than he or she earned for 23 years straight, they would be in serious trouble. The same is true for New Jersey, which went more than a decade of without a balanced budget, and now all these many years of poor fiscal management have culminated in new taxes and cuts.

Technically the state and federal government could fix the financial crunch by cutting spending, but God knows you oldsters would never consent to this. You would all be furious as your cars drove over pot holes that would go unfixed, as you waited on even longer lines at the DMV, as your local taxes went up to pay for the lack of State and Federal money that had to be cut to balance the budget. You would be furious about the rise in crime from the lack of available police, the rise in the cost of energy from the lack of government subsidies pouring into corporations, the lack of money going to museums and national parks and you would be more than aggravated about any other cutback in the government service you need. You would all surely be ready to kill if you heard your Social Security would be cut back to deal with the crunch you had tacitly approved of at the polls 20 years ago.

For these reasons, I am furious that you, the preceding generations of Americans, have been so pig-headed and whiney. You have not come up with a solution to the problems you have created and are now set on the fact that you deserve to continue living this charmed life, at my expense, at least until you finish out your lives. You realize the need to spend money, but dont like Governor Corzine's tax hike, which is largely dedicated to dealing with the crushing interest on debt and property tax repulsive as you found Jim Florio's tax hike, which lead to his eviction from Drumthwacket. Such thinking reminds me of Louis XV, the King of France who refused to deal with the distant rumblings of domestic discontentment and famously said, After me, the deluge. His son and daughter-in-law, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, would eventually be beheaded during the French Revolution.

But instead of complaining and not offering a constructive, viable solution to these problems, I will break from the pack, and propose an "Over 40 Tax." I think this is a perfectly reasonable answer to our dilemma. Yes, I know that such a tax targets a certain segment of the population unfairly, but why should I, a young person of 18 with my entire life ahead of me who has only just recently entered the workforce and registered to vote, pay for the mistakes you made when you voted for idiot politicians like Christie Whitman, Jim McGreevey, Ronald Reagan and the two Bush Presidents. These guys (and the lone gal) went off and spent money they didn't have, and you let them. You failed to speak up, or at least didn't speak up loud enough. You let it slide, knowing there would be consequences and I'll be damned if I will be paying many times more in state and federal taxes than you ever did just to pay for your failure to act adequately and finance your Social Security checks so you can sit on a beach in South Florida until you die of living the easy life. Is it too much to ask that you are held accountable for your poor selection of leaders? After all, I seem to remember Ronald Reagan and every other adult telling me for as long as I can remember that life boils down to personal responsibility.

In closing, I feel more upset about the principle and the perceived lack of civic respect you seem to have for your subsequent generations. The whole thing about the money isn't so much the problem as it is the manifestation of the bigger problem: That you didn't take your job as an American citizen seriously. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, as you have been very poor stewards of this country. You have not led, and because of it, your posterity will pay the price for decades to come.

Cool Chart

http://www.uuforum.org/deficit.htm

Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature

2006-08-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature

By JOHN KIFNER
NY Times

August 16, 2006

The Overview

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Aug. 15 — As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah.

A major reason — in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill — is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.

Nehme Y. Tohme, a member of Parliament from the anti-Syrian reform bloc and the country’s minister for the displaced, said he had been told by Hezbollah officials that when the shooting stopped, Iran would provide Hezbollah with an “unlimited budget” for reconstruction.

In his victory speech on Monday night, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, offered money for “decent and suitable furniture” and a year’s rent on a house to any Lebanese who lost his home in the month-long war.

“Completing the victory,” he said, “can come with reconstruction.”

On Tuesday, Israel began to pull many of its reserve troops out of southern Lebanon, and its military chief of staff said all of the soldiers could be back across the border within 10 days. Lebanese soldiers are expected to begin moving in a couple of days, supported by the first of 15,000 foreign troops.

While the Israelis began their withdrawal, hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable.

In Sreifa, a Hezbollah official said the group would offer an initial $10,000 to residents to help pay for the year of rent, to buy new furniture and to help feed families.

In Taibe, a town of fighting so heavy that large chunks were missing from walls and buildings where they had been sprayed with bullets, the Audi family stood with two Hezbollah volunteers, looking woefully at their windowless, bullet- and shrapnel-torn house.

In Bint Jbail, Hezbollah ambulances — large, new cars with flashing lights on the top — ferried bodies of fighters to graves out of mountains of rubble.

Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

“Hezbollah’s strength,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor at the Lebanese American University here, who has written extensively about the organization, in large part derives from “the gross vacuum left by the state.”

Hezbollah was not, she said, a state within a state, but rather “a state within a nonstate, actually.”

Sheik Nasrallah said in his speech that “the brothers in the towns and villages will turn to those whose homes are badly damaged and help rebuild them.

“Today is the day to keep up our promises,” he said. “All our brothers will be in your service starting tomorrow.”

Some southern towns were so damaged that on Tuesday residents had not yet begun to return. A fighter for the Amal movement, another Shiite militia group, said he had been told that Hezbollah members would begin to catalog damages in his town, Kafr Kila, on the Israeli border.

Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed.

Although Hezbollah is a Shiite organization, Sheik Nasrallah’s message resounded even with a Sunni Muslim, Ghaleb Jazi, 40, who works at the oil storage plant at Jiyeh, 15 miles south of Beirut. It was bombed by the Israelis and spewed pollution northward into the Mediterranean.

“The government may do some work on bridges and roads, but when it comes to rebuilding houses, Hezbollah will have a big role to play,” he said. “Nasrallah said yesterday he would rebuild, and he will come through.”

Sheik Nasrallah’s speech was interpreted by some as a kind of watershed in Lebanese politics, establishing his group on an equal footing with the official government.

“It was a coup d’état,” said Jad al-Akjaoui, a political analyst aligned with the democratic reform bloc. He was among the organizers of the anti-Syrian demonstrations after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri two years ago that led to international pressure to rid Lebanon of 15 years of Syrian control.

Rami G. Khouri, a columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut, wrote that Sheik Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader rather than the head of one group in Lebanon’s rich mosaic of political parties.”

“In tone and content, his remarks seemed more like those of a president or a prime minister should be making while addressing the nation after a terrible month of destruction and human suffering,” Mr. Khouri wrote. “His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.”

Defense Minister Elias Murr said Tuesday that the government would not seek to disarm Hezbollah.

“The army is not going to the south to strip the Hezbollah of its weapons and do the work that Israel did not,” he said, showing just how difficult reining in the militia will most likely be in the coming weeks and months. He added that “the resistance,” meaning Hezbollah, had been cooperating with the government and there was no need to confront it.

Sheik Nasrallah sounded much like a governor responding to a disaster when he said, “So far, the initial count available to us on completely demolished houses exceeds 15,000 residential units.

“We cannot of course wait for the government and its heavy vehicles and machinery because they could be a while,” he said. He also cautioned, “No one should raise prices due to a surge in demand.”

Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger, Professor Saad-Ghorayeb said, because of the weakness of the central government.

“Hezbollah has two pillars of support,” she said, “the resistance and the social services. What this war has illustrated is that it is best at both.

Referring to Shiek Nasrallah, she said: “He tells the people, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to protect you. And we’re going to reconstruct. This has happened before. We will deliver.’ ”

Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Sreifa, Lebanon, for this article, Sabrina Tavernise from Taibe and Robert F. Worth from Jiyeh.

Losing a War for Our Ignorance

2006-08-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

Ambassador claims shortly before invasion, Bush didn't know there were two sects of Islam

Christian Avard
Published: Friday August 4, 2006

Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam--to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

Research by RAW STORY has confirmed a surprising lack of public statements from the president regarding the branches of Islam, but did uncover at least one mention of their existence. A fact sheet released by the White House in December of 2001 does indeed use the term Sunni to describe a Lashkar-E-Tayyib, "the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad." Other mentions, not originating from the White House, were common in government documents and proceedings, as well as in media coverage of the middle east.

Other reports also place Bush announcing newfound knowledge of the differences between Muslim groups shortly before entering the Iraq war.

In an interview with RAW STORY, Ambassador Galbraith recounted this anecdote from his book to exemplify “a culture of arrogance that pervaded the whole administration.”

“From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society,” said Galbraith. “The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq.”

The Bush Administration’s aims when it invaded Iraq in March 2003 were to bring it democracy and transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has reverted to its three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan, an Iran-dominated Shiite theocracy in the south, and a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center.

Galbraith argues that because the new Iraq was never a voluntary creation of its people--but rather held together by force--America’s ongoing attempt to preserve a unified nation is guaranteed to fail, especially since it’s divided into three different entities.

“You can’t have a national unity government when there is no nation, no unity, and no government,” said Galbraith. “Rather than trying to preserve or hold together a unified Iraq, the U.S. must accept the reality of Iraq’s breakup and work with the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions.”

Galbraith further argues that the invasion of Iraq destabilized the Middle East while inadvertently strengthening Iran. One of the administration's intentions in invading Iraq was to undermine Iran, but instead, the Iraqi occupation has given Tehran one of its greatest strategic triumphs in the last four centuries.

Once considered to be Iraq’s worst enemy, Iran has now created, financed and armed the Shiite Islamic movements within southern Iraq. Since the Iraqi Parliamentary elections of 2005, the Shiites have made considerable political gains and now have substantial influence over the country’s U.S.-created military, its police, and the central government in Baghdad. In addition, Iraq is developing economic ties with Iran that Galbraith believes could soon link the two countries’ strategic oil supplies.

Galbraith says that, “thanks to George W. Bush, Iran today has no closer ally in the world than the Iraq of the Ayatollahs.” As a result, he argues, sending U.S. forces into Iraq, has in effect, made them hostage to Iran and its Iraqi Shiite allies and left the U.S. without a viable military option to halt Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

A seasoned diplomat, Galbraith served as the first U.S. ambassador to Croatia, where he negotiated the 1995 Erdut Agreement that ended the Croatian war.

Galbraith fears the United States may have lost the war on the very day it took Baghdad. “The American servicemen and women who took Baghdad were professionals--disciplined, courteous, and task-oriented,” said Galbraith. “Unfortunately, their political masters were so focused on making the case for war, so keen to vanquish their political foes at home, felt certain that Iraqis would embrace American-style democracy, yet they were so blinded by their own ideology that they failed to plan for the most obvious tasks following military victory.”

Galbraith believes that the Bush Administration’s effort will only leave the U.S. with an open-ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. In the end, he believes, America’s most important objective is to avoid a worsening civil war.

“There is no easy exit from Iraq,” said Galbraith. “The alternative, however is to continue the present strategy of trying to build national institutions-displaced in the 2003 invasion-but how can you do that where this now is no longer an existing nation?”

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

2006-07-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

July 22, 2006
Link

By DAVID S. CLOUD and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON, July 21 — The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah.

The munitions that the United States is sending to Israel are part of a multimillion-dollar arms sale package approved last year that Israel is able to draw on as needed, the officials said. But Israel’s request for expedited delivery of the satellite and laser-guided bombs was described as unusual by some military officers, and as an indication that Israel still had a long list of targets in Lebanon to strike.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she would head to Israel on Sunday at the beginning of a round of Middle Eastern diplomacy. The original plan was to include a stop to Cairo in her travels, but she did not announce any stops in Arab capitals.

Instead, the meeting of Arab and European envoys planned for Cairo will take place in Italy, Western diplomats said. While Arab governments initially criticized Hezbollah for starting the fight with Israel in Lebanon, discontent is rising in Arab countries over the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, and the governments have become wary of playing host to Ms. Rice until a cease-fire package is put together.

To hold the meetings in an Arab capital before a diplomatic solution is reached, said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, “would have identified the Arabs as the primary partner of the United States in this project at a time where Hezbollah is accusing the Arab leaders of providing cover for the continuation of Israel’s military operation.”

The decision to stay away from Arab countries for now is a markedly different strategy from the shuttle diplomacy that previous administrations used to mediate in the Middle East. “I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante,” Ms. Rice said Friday. “I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling around, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do.”

Before Ms. Rice heads to Israel on Sunday, she will join President Bush at the White House for discussions on the Middle East crisis with two Saudi envoys, Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the secretary general of the National Security Council.

The new American arms shipment to Israel has not been announced publicly, and the officials who described the administration’s decision to rush the munitions to Israel would discuss it only after being promised anonymity. The officials included employees of two government agencies, and one described the shipment as just one example of a broad array of armaments that the United States has long provided Israel.

One American official said the shipment should not be compared to the kind of an “emergency resupply” of dwindling Israeli stockpiles that was provided during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when an American military airlift helped Israel recover from early Arab victories.

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, said: “We have been using precision-guided munitions in order to neutralize the military capabilities of Hezbollah and to minimize harm to civilians. As a rule, however, we do not comment on Israel’s defense acquisitions.”

Israel’s need for precision munitions is driven in part by its strategy in Lebanon, which includes destroying hardened underground bunkers where Hezbollah leaders are said to have taken refuge, as well as missile sites and other targets that would be hard to hit without laser and satellite-guided bombs.

Pentagon and military officials declined to describe in detail the size and contents of the shipment to Israel, and they would not say whether the munitions were being shipped by cargo aircraft or some other means. But an arms-sale package approved last year provides authority for Israel to purchase from the United States as many as 100 GBU-28’s, which are 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs intended to destroy concrete bunkers. The package also provides for selling satellite-guided munitions.

An announcement in 2005 that Israel was eligible to buy the “bunker buster” weapons described the GBU-28 as “a special weapon that was developed for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground.” The document added, “The Israeli Air Force will use these GBU-28’s on their F-15 aircraft.”

American officials said that once a weapons purchase is approved, it is up to the buyer nation to set up a timetable. But one American official said normal procedures usually do not include rushing deliveries within days of a request. That was done because Israel is a close ally in the midst of hostilities, the official said.

Although Israel had some precision guided bombs in its stockpile when the campaign in Lebanon began, the Israelis may not have taken delivery of all the weapons they were entitled to under the 2005 sale.

Israel said its air force had dropped 23 tons of explosives Wednesday night alone in Beirut, in an effort to penetrate what was believed to be a bunker used by senior Hezbollah officials.

A senior Israeli official said Friday that the attacks to date had degraded Hezbollah’s military strength by roughly half, but that the campaign could go on for two more weeks or longer. “We will stay heavily with the air campaign,” he said. “There’s no time limit. We will end when we achieve our goals.”

The Bush administration announced Thursday a military equipment sale to Saudi Arabia, worth more than $6 billion, a move that may in part have been aimed at deflecting inevitable Arab government anger at the decision to supply Israel with munitions in the event that effort became public.

On Friday, Bush administration officials laid out their plans for the diplomatic strategy that Ms. Rice will pursue. In Rome, the United States will try to hammer out a diplomatic package that will offer Lebanon incentives under the condition that a United Nations resolution, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah, is implemented.

Diplomats will also try to figure out the details around an eventual international peacekeeping force, and which countries will contribute to it. Germany and Russia have both indicated that they would be willing to contribute forces; Ms. Rice said the United States was unlikely to.

Implicit in the eventual diplomatic package is a cease-fire. But a senior American official said it remained unclear whether, under such a plan, Hezbollah would be asked to retreat from southern Lebanon and commit to a cease-fire, or whether American diplomats might depend on Israel’s continued bombardment to make Hezbollah’s acquiescence irrelevant.

Daniel Ayalon, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said that Israel would not rule out an international force to police the borders of Lebanon and Syria and to patrol southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has had a stronghold. But he said that Israel was first determined to take out Hezbollah’s command and control centers and weapons stockpiles.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting for this article.

Violence soaring despite growing number of Iraqi forces

2006-07-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

Go to Democracy Now for Good Info

also Huffington Post

The article below is from Knight Ridder News service

Violence soaring despite growing number of Iraqi forces
Link
By Tom Lasseter
McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Despite the addition of almost 100,000 U.S.-trained Iraqi troops in the past year, American efforts to pacify central Iraq and the capital appear to be failing, challenging a central assumption behind the U.S. strategy in Iraq: that training more Iraqi security forces will allow American troops to start going home.

The number of trained Iraqi soldiers and police grew from an estimated 168,670 in June 2005 to some 264,600 this June. Yet Baghdad's morgue is receiving nearly twice as many dead Iraqis each day as it did last year. The number of bombings causing multiple fatalities has risen steadily. Attacks on American and Iraqi troops last month grew 44 percent from June 2005.

"Even as the number and capabilities of Iraqi security forces have increased, overall security conditions have deteriorated," concluded a report that the Government Accountability Office submitted to Congress earlier this month.

Baghdad, usually clogged with traffic, has fallen quiet in recent weeks. Shops are shuttered. Roads are nearly empty in many neighborhoods. No one wants to be caught out in the open by gunmen, who set up roadblocks with seeming impunity.

Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who commands the task force that's training Iraq's army, didn't respond to written questions about whether the U.S. still has confidence in the training program. Other American officers in Iraq acknowledged the difficulties but counseled patience.

"You don't stand up an organization ... overnight and expect it to have all the same values, the same organization, the same commitment as you might in other organizations that's been in existence for 10 or 15 years," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top U.S. spokesman in Iraq, said recently. "I mean, they're only a month and a half into their new government right now. They're only three years into this new formation of their armed forces. So they do have some ways to still go."

If the U.S.-led effort to stand up more Iraqi troops and police doesn't start improving security in the capital and other troubled areas, however, the Bush administration may be forced to consider sending more troops to Iraq, trying to convince other nations to send troops or even beginning to withdraw some Americans from the worst areas - or from Iraq. That could risk triggering the all-out civil war that some think has already begun.

Indeed, the growing violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims has raised troubling questions about whether Iraqi forces, which are disproportionately drawn from the Shiite population, are helping to curb the bloodshed or are contributing to it.

Eyewitnesses at some scenes of sectarian cleansing in Sunni areas report that gunmen travel in government vehicles. Others note that attackers have traveled from one neighborhood to another through police checkpoints, apparently unchallenged.

In Shiite areas, residents complain that security forces seem unable to stop large groups of Sunni fighters, who either detonate large car bombs, killing dozens, or swarm in large groups wielding AK-47 rifles and grenades.

In Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, the few remaining Shiite families recently got notes on their doorsteps that said, "Leave Ghazaliyah, you Shiites, or be ready for death." A single bullet accompanied each note.

One Shiite who lives there, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that he be identified only by his first name, Ali, said Iraqi army checkpoints "disappear from the area at sunset, which is why we guard ourselves."

Many Iraqis fear that the goal of a peaceful, unified country with a representative government and competent security forces will remain unachievable for a long time to come.

Some U.S. officials acknowledge privately that their hopes that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to rein in Shiite militia groups and persuade Sunni insurgents to negotiate may be misplaced. Many of the government's leaders, they note, are themselves linked to Shiite or Kurdish militias or guerrilla groups.

"I keep hope up - it's misguided perhaps - that cooler heads will prevail," said an American defense official in Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "I have to believe that; otherwise all of this has been a tremendous, tremendous fiasco."

Statistics indicate that the security situation is steadily deteriorating, despite the much-heralded ascendancy of the Maliki government in April and the death in June of the country's most notorious terrorist, al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Last month, the Baghdad morgue received the bodies of 1,595 Iraqis who'd been killed by violence in and around the capital, the highest toll since Saddam Hussein fell in 2003, according to morgue officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired from their government jobs or being targeted by armed groups.

In June 2005, the director of the Baghdad morgue said he received 700 to 800 bodies a month, or 24 to 26 a day. Now, the morgue is receiving at least 50 slain Iraqis each day, morgue officials said.

A human rights report that the United Nations mission in Baghdad released Tuesday says 2,669 civilians were killed across Iraq during May and 3,149 were killed in June. In total, 14,338 civilians were killed from January to June this year, and 150,000 were forced out of their homes, the report says.

Sunni insurgent attacks on Iraqi and U.S. forces continue unabated. While the number of American troops killed by hostile fire has declined, the average daily number of attacks on U.S. and Iraqi soldiers and police nationwide increased by 44 percent last month versus June 2005, to 88 from 61.

Other months have shown similar increases: April was up 59 percent, to 86 this year from 54 last year, and May was up 44 percent, to 91 from 63, according to figures supplied by the U.S. military in Baghdad.

Statistics compiled by the Brookings Institution in Washington indicate that daily attacks by insurgents have risen consistently during the past three years.

They also show a steady rise in multiple-fatality bombings, a hallmark of Sunni insurgents and foreign terrorists. In 2004, the highest monthly total was 19 multiple-fatality bombings, which occurred in only one month that year. In 2005, the highest monthly total was 46. This year, there already have been two months in which the total has surpassed 50.

Major attacks now come with startling frequency.

-On July 8, a car bomb killed at least five people in front of a Shiite mosque in a Sunni neighborhood in western Baghdad. On July 9, gunmen whom residents identified as members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia pulled Sunnis from their homes and cars and shot them dead in the street. Iraqi police put the number of dead at more than 40, though U.S. military officials said their troops found just 14 bodies. The next day, two car bombs detonated in a northeast Baghdad neighborhood known as a Sadr stronghold, killing at least eight Shiites and wounding more than 30.

-This Monday, dozens of gunmen, presumably Sunnis, stormed into a market in the town of Mahmoudiya, just south of Baghdad, and killed more than 45 people and wounded at least 90 - almost all of them Shiites - in a hailstorm of AK-47 fire, grenades and mortars. Witnesses said Iraqi police and army troops stationed nearby didn't appear until after the killing was over.

-On Tuesday, a man pulled up to a group of laborers across the street from a Shiite shrine in the southern town of Kufa and asked if they were looking for work. When a crowd gathered around his minivan, the man detonated a bomb, killing more than 50 Iraqis and wounding about 120.

There are about 8,000 American soldiers in Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a top U.S. spokesman in Iraq.

"They can't be everywhere all the time in a city of over 7 million people," he said.

That's left many areas governed by AK-47s.

Ali said his vigilante force in the Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah usually was joined by Shiites from a Shiite neighborhood to the east, who were there to make sure the Sunnis didn't push farther toward them.

Ali and his neighbors were watching from their rooftops last week when they saw gunmen approaching through the alleyways from several directions. The gunmen were carrying AK-47s and heavy PKC machine guns.

"They started firing at our houses. They didn't expect a very quick response, but we gave them one ... we surrounded them. They were in a trap, and gunfire on them was from everywhere," Ali said, relishing the story. "We killed a lot of them; I don't know an exact number. After defeating them, it was our turn to attack. We followed them, and we saw them entering (a) mosque, which we shot with two rocket-propelled grenades. And then we returned home."

Ali said he was ready for the next fight, the next chance to defend his piece of Baghdad.

For more information online, go to:

www.brookings.edu

http://icasualties.org/oif

McClatchy Newspapers special correspondents Laith Hammoudi, Mohammed al Dulaimy and Huda Ahmed contributed to this report from Baghdad.

Another Mission ‘Accomplished’

2006-07-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Another Mission ‘Accomplished’
NY Times Editorial
July 11, 2006

The release of the White House midsession budget review is an annual event normally marked by a few wonkish observations and the routine updating of various spreadsheets, not by a full-dress presidential dog-and-pony show. But President Bush plans to preside today, with members of Congress and invited guests in attendance. By all indications, including his own in his weekly radio address last Saturday, he plans to turn this into a celebration — just in time for the fall campaign.

This is proof, if anyone still needs it, that this administration is desperate for something to boast about. On Mr. Bush’s watch, triple-digit budget surpluses have turned into annual triple-digit budget deficits. There’s no information in the midsession report to alter that utterly dispiriting fact. Yes, the report is expected to project that this year’s deficit will be somewhat less gargantuan than last year’s — probably somewhere between $280 billion and $300 billion, versus a $318 billion shortfall in 2005. That’s not much to crow about.

But Mr. Bush is likely to gloat, anyway. Earlier this year, the administration conveniently projected a highly inflated deficit of $423 billion. With that as a starting point, the actual results can be spun to look as if they’re worth cheering.

The razzle-dazzle won’t end there. As he did in his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Bush is sure to use today’s event to credit tax cuts for a projected “surge” in tax revenue. The Treasury is expected to take in about $250 billion more in 2006 than in 2005, for a total take of $2.4 trillion. Devoid of context, the number looks impressive.

In fact, it is $100 billion less than the $2.5 trillion revenue estimate the administration touted when it set out in 2001 to sell its policy of never-ending tax cuts. Even with this year’s bigger haul, real revenue growth during the Bush years will be abysmal, averaging about 0.3 percent per capita, versus an average of nearly 10 percent in all previous post-World War II business cycles. That might be excusable if the recent revenue improvements could reasonably be expected to continue. They cannot. Much of the increase in tax receipts is from corporate profits, high-income investors and super high-earning executives, sources that are just as unpredictable as the financial markets to which they’re inevitably linked.

So, the revenue surge is neither a sign that the tax cuts are working nor of sustainable economic growth. A growing number of economists, most prominently from the Congressional Budget Office, point out that upsurges in revenue are also the result of growing income inequality in the United States, an observation that is consistent with mounting evidence of a rapidly widening gap between the rich and everyone else. As corporations and high- income Americans claim ever more of the economic pie, revenues rise, even if there’s no increase in overall economic growth.

If Mr. Bush looked behind his headline numbers, he, too, could see that the rich are getting richer while the rest are, at best, only holding ground. It would make sense to use some of the windfall revenue to enact policies and programs that tilt against growing inequality. Unfortunately, he’s flogging more tax cuts that will deepen the divide.

Explosions in the World Trade Center on 911

2006-07-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

I have discovered YouTube and have been watching video of the World Trade center coming down.

It is obvious from eye witness accounts that there were multiple explosions in the Trade Center besides the planes that crashed into the towers. I can not find government explanations of these explosions.

The official explanation for why the towers collapsed is that fire and structural damage from the crashing plane caused one floor to collapse, and each floor collapsed under the weight of the first. But the towers collapsed at the speed of gravity, they fell completely in 8.4 seconds according to seismic data.

These facts contradict the official government response, and lead one to believe that a controlled explosion brought down the towers. And what about WTC Building 7 which only had a small fire and no structural damage from any impact, it collapsed exactly like a controlled demolition with explosives. The government should investigate and adequately answer these questions.

Here's an empirical analysis by Steven E. Jones Department of Physics and Astronomy Brigham Young University.
Another analysis by Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D. Texas A&M University

This video provides a good summary of conflicting evidence, regarding the official explination of 911.

This video shows eyewitness acounts of the explosions.

The Strange Collapse of Building 7

The World Trade Center, destroyed by Controlled Demolition

Gnarls Barkley

2006-07-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

Another Music Video, The official Album of Summer 2006, Gnarls Barkley St Elsewhere and the Hit Single Crazy. This video is extremely clever, check it out. The whole album is great, it was in my cd player for months.

Sly and the Family Stone

2006-07-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

Wow What a terrific Performance By Sly and the Family Stone. I just had to remember this one. This is as good as music gets. It's a perfectly composed medley of their songs. Amazing.

A Perfect Storm Descends on the Nation's Capital

2006-06-26T19:00:00.000-07:00

A Perfect Storm Descends on the Nation's Capital

Drenching Rains, a Fallen Elm, a Supreme Court Decision and President's Words on Global Warming

By BILL BLAKEMORE

June 26, 2006 — - A perfect storm of drenching rain, irony, political rancor, public fear and -- at the last minute like a fierce stroke of lightning -- word from the highest court in the land, descended on the nation's capital today.

This storm -- pulling in many parts of the global warming emergency -- also broke through the White House perimeters and helped bring down a century-old elm tree, laying it across the driveway.

Even President Bush was drawn into the storm this morning, talking about climate change in a way he may find difficult to explain.

The brewing battles of and about global warming are now being joined.

The massive downpours this morning shorting out government buildings with flooded basements, seizing up legislative communications, snarling traffic access to white columned buildings, fit exactly the pattern predicted decades ago as a consequence of global warming.

It's a simple fourth grade science lesson: the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold.

Winds suck up more water vapor from oceans and farmlands -- leaving more agricultural drought behind -- and when they finally do dump that moisture out as rain, the downpours are much heavier.

Not just in the United States. Worldwide, such downpours have been increasing markedly over recent decades -- exactly as predicted by scientists.

In the 1980's, leading American climatologists stood in front of Congress, trying to get across the reality of this planetary threat.

One of the world's most resepected climatologists, NASA's James Hansen, even used a dice metaphor to make it clear.

If you paint one side of the die red, you'll roll red about one in six times. Paint four red, and you'll roll red on average four in six times.

Manmade greenhouse gas emissions, Hansen explained, were loading the dice so that we'd have such extreme weather far more frequently. And, exactly as predicted, we and the world have -- well above what the frequency of any natural weather cycles can explain.

Amidst this morning's capital chaos -- including that White House elm bowled over and uprooted in the storm-drenched ground -- the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in.

The nation's highest court announced that it will indeed hear the case brought against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that it should have regulated carbon dioxide emissions in order to combat global warming.

The case is brought by a dozen states from New York and Massachusetts in the East (as well as Washington, D.C.) to California and Oregon in the West, along with a number of cities, plus some environmental groups.

Whatever the Supreme Court finally decides, their agreement to hear the case will only amplify news and discussion about what so many now -- including all credible scientists -- recognize as a grave planetary emergency.

And the president amid this morning's wind and rain?

In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: "I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?"

"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary ... to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil..."

The President -- as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find -- is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said -- as he also did a few weeks ago -- that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" ... well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society level."

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence -- gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world -- that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

One small group of special interest businesses leaders -- those of some fossil fuel companies -- have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this.

They've aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president's words this morning) "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" -- though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing.

Drenching waters, president's words, high judges' scrutiny, worried voters, journalists scrambling to get their arms around this enormous story, oil executives looking at spread sheets while they explore for more oil in Canada and the Arctic, and one elm down ... so far.

Meteorologists predict more heavy rain this week along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.

Climatologists predict much the same for the coming decades.

Flag-waving for political gain

2006-06-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

Flag-waving for political gain

6/24/2006
By LEONARD PITTS
Original
Thank you, Dianne Feinstein. Composition teachers all over the country are indebted to the Democratic senator from California for an article published Tuesday in USA Today.

Instead of tearing their hair out trying to instruct students in the finer points of logic, rhetoric and critical thinking, teachers will henceforth be able to simply pull out Feinstein's piece and say, "Don't do this." They will never find a better illustration of a bad argument badly made.

Feinstein is co-sponsor of something called the Flag Protection Amendment, the latest congressional effort to amend the Constitution to protect the U.S. flag from "desecration" - an interesting word, given its connotations of religious devotion.

Her commentary in support of the amendment certainly hits all the patriotic sweet spots, invoking the image of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, reminding us that the flag is a symbol of "our democracy, our shared values, our commitment to justice, and our eternal memory of those who have sacrificed to defend these principles."

Feinstein also notes that Congress has power to protect the Lincoln Memorial from defilement, so it should have similar power to protect the flag, "our monument in cloth." She denies the amendment would infringe on free speech, because, "There is no idea or thought expressed by the burning of the American flag that cannot be expressed equally well in another manner."

As arguments go, this one has it all - pathos, tears, drama. Everything except actual, you know, logic.

The comparison to the Lincoln Memorial, for example, might make sense if the flag were a single iconic structure housed on federal land instead of a banner that shows up on T-shirts, used-car lots and mailboxes.

As for the idea that anyone who wants to express an idea by burning the flag can express the same idea equally well through other means, that's not her call. Who is she to tell me - or you - what means we may or may not use to express a political opinion? If someone loathes their country and wants to express that opinion, who is she to decide what words, methods or approach that person is allowed to use? If free speech means anything, it means that she doesn't have that right.

Feinstein, by the way, is reacting to a crisis that does not exist. You know how many flag "desecrations" there have been this year? A dozen? There've been three. This is according to the Citizens Flag Alliance, a group that "supports" the proposed amendment. Three. More people were struck by lightning. Heck, I bet more people spontaneously combusted.

So essentially what we have here is an effort to amend the Constitution and abridge the First Amendment in order to stop people from doing what people aren't doing. Am I the only one who finds this more than faintly ridiculous?

The rapper Chuck D, among others, calls them "weapons of mass distraction," these periodic outbursts of noise and inanity whereby our leaders attempt to hijack the public's attention, direct it away from anything that means anything. As the use of those weapons goes, this one feels especially cynical, playing as it does on love of country and respect for the sacrifices of forebears.

But maybe we should love the one and respect the other enough to stand up for real American ideals and demand that our representatives do the same, rather than play games of symbolism that solve no problems, address no issues and insult our collective intelligence in the process.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. "And" to the Republic for which it stands. But there's a big difference between honoring the flag and fetishizing it. Especially at the cost of doing violence to the Constitution.

Apparently nobody cares if we desecrate that.

Miami Herald

Seneca plan for casino aims locally

2006-04-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

SEC filing contrasts "world class' billing

By MATTHEW SPINA
News Staff Reporter
4/9/2006
Original Article

The Seneca Gaming Corp. confirms in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its emerging Buffalo casino will cater primarily to Buffalo and its suburbs, raising worries that it will drain assets already here without pulling significant outside dollars into the local economy.

The disclosure kicked up these events Saturday:

After conferring with Mayor Byron W. Brown, City Hall's development commissioner called the news "very troubling" and said it "speaks strongly" against the city providing $6 million in water, sewer and road improvements the Senecas want for the casino.

County Executive Joel A. Giambra urged the County Legislature to join him in filing a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of the forces trying to block the casino in state and federal courts.

An Assembly Democrat said he would write to the U.S. Department of the Interior to say the public rhetoric from the Seneca Gaming Corp. had not jibed with their less-visible filings with government regulators.

A Seneca corporation spokesman responded that the Buffalo casino, to be built near the Cobblestone District, will significantly benefit Buffalo.

"We believe that Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino will provide tangible economic benefits to the community, most notably in the share of slot revenues," responded Seneca Gaming spokesman Phil Pantano. "It is a $125 million investment in an area that hasn't seen that kind of investment in some time, if ever."

Meanwhile, he said the casino could retake some of the $60 million to $80 million a year that leaves the Buffalo area to be wagered at the Fort Erie race track.

"We would certainly like to capture as much of that as possible and support local jobs," Pantano said.

The Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino's 1,900 to 2,200 slot machines, 30 to 50 gaming tables, plus its restaurants and stores are expected to "cater primarily to the local market," the corporation said in a February filing with the SEC, explaining that Buffalo Creek would "complement" Seneca Nation's casino to the north, Seneca Niagara, and its casino to the south, Seneca Allegany.

That disclosure, not the first of its kind from Seneca Gaming, provides fodder for Buffalo's anti-casino forces. While the corporation's SEC filings have been frank, its officials have publicly spoken in grander terms, saying they want to build a "signature destination" and a "world-class" facility in Buffalo.

"The public pronouncements in the press releases differ greatly from the written pronouncements in the official Securities and Exchange documents," Giambra said. "It appears that we might have a situation of fraud here."

He has said the casino ought to be a resort-style, tourist destination, not a downtown development, and he wants lawmakers to join him in filing an amicus curiae brief on behalf of anti-casino forces, or join their lawsuits.

Legislature Chairwoman Lynn M. Marinelli, D-Town of Tonawanda, without knowing the wishes of the full Legislature on Saturday, said a court brief could be signed by those legislators who agree with the statement, regardless of whether they form a Legislature majority.

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, longtime critic of a Buffalo casino, plans to write the Interior Department about the inconsistency. "The official documents submitted to regulators say one thing," the Buffalo Democrat said. "The public rhetoric and the sales pitch to people who have a decision-making role in granting them a license, were something entirely different.

"I have said for years this is going to be just picking our own pockets. I am anti-casino, not for religious or moral reasons but for economic reasons."

The Senecas' recent disclosure raised serious issues within the city, which would gain a share of casino revenue and a projected 1,000 permanent casino jobs, not to mention construction jobs. "The primary economic justification for a casino in Buffalo has been that more tourist dollars will come to and stay here than will leave the host community," said Richard M. Tobe, the city's commissioner of development, permits and inspections.

He said information in the SEC document "raises the strong possibility that the Buffalo Creek Casino will have negative impacts on our local economy" and "speaks strongly against the city providing any support for the infrastructure improvements requested by the Seneca Nation around the Buffalo Creek Casino site."

Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder Sr. in March requested that the city provide $6 million in road, sewer, water and traffic signal improvements. Pantano did not respond specifically to Tobe's statement Saturday.

e-mail: mspina@buffnews.com

Hidden costs of gambling

2006-04-17T07:33:00.000-07:00

From addiction to big-money embezzlement, authorities express concerns over increase in casino-related problems

By PHIL FAIRBANKS
Buffalo News Staff Reporter
4/17/2006
Original Article

Carl Bucki sees the impact of casino gambling in the record number of cases that cross his bench as federal Bankruptcy Court judge.

Frank Clark sees it in the big-money embezzlement cases his county prosecutors take to trial.

And Renee Wert sees it in her addiction counseling caseload that has more than doubled since casinos first arrived on the local scene.

The Seneca Niagara Casino's economic impact is not just jobs, taxes and development. It also includes crime, bankruptcy and job loss.

These are the hidden costs of gambling.

"He doesn't see half of it," Wert said of Clark. "People are stealing from their families, and it's going unreported. They're taking money from their kids' college funds. I've seen cases of parents breaking into their kids' piggy banks so they can gamble."

Wert, as head of gambling treatment services at Jewish Family Service, is on the front lines. Her caseload jumped 147 percent in five years, and she estimates seven out of every 10 people she treats have filed for bankruptcy.

That's just one of the costs to the community. No one disputes the notion that Seneca Niagara and other gambling venues create problem gamblers. The question is, how many and what do they cost the local community?

Even the nation's top researchers, from Harvard to the University of Illinois, disagree over the extent to which casino gambling adds to a community's ills and at what cost.

"There's no pee test for gambling," said Mark Farrell, the town judge in charge of Amherst's Gambling Court. "It's like trying to get your hands around a cloud."

But talk to the judges, prosecutors and counselors who see the effects firsthand, and you hear horror stories of people who got addicted and fell into debt.

Or people so desperate for cash, they stole from their family or employer.

They also will tell you that bankruptcy, more than anything else, may be the single most common consequence of being a "problem or pathological" gambler.

Wert's program counseled 245 people last year, up from 99 in 2000, and she estimates 70 percent for bankruptcy. Some twice.

That's hardly a surprise to Bucki, one of two U.S. Bankruptcy Court judges in Western New York. He's convinced casinos are a big part of the problem.

"There's no question in my mind," Bucki said. "After handling thousands of bankruptcy cases, I'm convinced casino gambling is a significant factor in the tremendous increase we've seen in bankruptcy cases."

There were more than 14,000 bankruptcy filings in Western New York last year, nearly four times the number in 1993.

"I know, for a fact," he said, "that this problem goes largely unreported."

Even in his own court.

Bankruptcy filers are required to fill out a questionnaire, a "Statement of Financial Affairs," that asks if gambling is one of the reasons they're in debt.

Most people, because of shame and embarrassment, answer "no" even when gambling is a factor, Bucki said.

More often than not, he added, the gambler blames his debt on credit card abuse. What he won't tell you is that his paycheck went into the slots. And that's when he turned to credit cards.

Bucki isn't the only law enforcement official who sees a link between increased crime and casinos.

Bigger caseloads

County prosectors used to prosecute big-money embezzlement cases, those involving more than $100,000, about three or four times a year. His staff now sees four times that number, Clark said.

"Over the past five or six years, I've seen a dramatic increase in embezzlement-type crime, and gambling has played a role," the district attorney said.

Assistant District Attorney John Doscher is the prosecutor in those cases, and he estimates the number of casino-related cases doubled in five years.

Not so long ago, the big embezzlement cases centered on people who lived the high life, Doscher said. Now, it's losses at the casino.

"We're getting more cases and bigger cases," he said. "It used to be rare to see anything over $50,000. It's no longer something that makes your eyes pop out. Now, it just doesn't catch your attention."

Bigger caseloads are also the trend in Amherst Town Court, home to the only Gambling Court in the nation.

That's where Farrell, every two weeks or so, hears the stories of gamblers who stepped over the line. Most have misdemeanor or felony convictions involving large sums of money and have been diagnosed as problem or pathological gamblers.

Denial and secrecy

During one two-hour court session in March, more than a dozen people appeared before Farrell.

Some were like Walter, a small-business owner. He estimated he lost more than $40,000 gambling at the casinos.

"Folks have no clue what overcame you," Farrell told the man, "and how pervasive a gambling addiction can be."

"I always gambled," answered Walter, now in his 40s. "As a young man, that was the cool thing to do."

One by one, the recovering addicts marched before Farrell and told story after story of self-destructive behavior that led to crime.

"I've gambled every day of my life since I was 19," said a man identified only as Anthony, a young husband and father arrested for writing a bad check. "It quickly became a downward spiral and very destructive."

For many of the people, Farrell is the only thing standing between them and jail time. And yet, the judge still finds himself confronting denial and secrecy.

"People are more willing to admit they're drug users than gamblers," Farrell said.

One of the problems in tracking the link between gambling and crime is a reluctance to go to the police, especially when the victims and thieves are family members.

"What you get is a lot of denial," said Anne Constantino, president of Horizons Health Services, one of two local treatment agencies.

The typical case isn't the gambler who gets arrested, it's the gambler who gets away with his crime, says Wert, from Jewish Family Service.

She still talks about the young man who stole his mother's Social Security number, used it to acquire credit cards and left her with $30,000 in gambling losses.

"Mom couldn't bring herself to prosecute," Wert said.

Heated debate

The hidden costs of casino gambling are being debated across the country, wherever there's a casino, and nowhere is the discussion more passionate than at the nation's top colleges and universities.

In one corner, researchers suggest gambling creates a host of economic problems, from suicide, divorce and domestic violence, to bankruptcy, crime and low employee productivity.

One expert, Earl Grinols, an economics professor at Baylor University, told Congress in 2003 that for every $1 in benefits, gambling costs society $3.

On the other side of the debate are experts who claim the "invisible" nature of problem gambling makes it difficult to quantify, both in terms of people and money.

In 1999, the National Gambling Impact Study commissioned by Congress referred to both schools of thought in calling for a moratorium on casino development.

The study estimated the number of problem and pathological gamblers in the United States had reached 3 million, with 15 million more people at risk. It also put the cost to society at about $5 billion a year.

One thing is certain, Wert said. The problem is getting worse, not better, in large part because of casinos here and elsewhere.

"When I started here in 1994, we had a lot of sports, horse racing and lottery gamblers," she said. "Now, it's almost exclusively casino and lottery gamblers."

e-mail: pfairbanks@buffnews.com

Casino promises - still waiting : Buffalo News Article

2006-04-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

- Three years after it opened, the Seneca-Niagara Casino hasn't sparked the new development state and local leaders promised
First of two parts -

By PHIL FAIRBANKS
News Staff Reporter
4/16/2006
Original Article

When casino gambling arrived in Western New York, state and local leaders promised new hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and thousands of non-casino jobs.

It's a promise never kept.

The Seneca Gaming Corp., after three years of operation, rakes in nearly $500 million a year, two-thirds from its Niagara Falls casino, and turns a weekly operating profit of $2.7 million.

But outside the casino walls, the economics are murky, with a mix of good - more than 3,000 people are employed at Seneca Niagara Casino - and bad - the glaring lack of development and job growth around the complex.

Niagara Falls' experiment with casino gambling - and the model it provides Buffalo - resembles Atlantic City more than Las Vegas.

A Buffalo News analysis of government records and casino documents, as well as interviews with 35 developers, local officials and business owners, found:

• Most of the $306 million spent at the Seneca Niagara casino comes from local wallets - an estimated $177 million last year.

• The promise of spin-off development, new hotels, restaurants and stores, remains unfulfilled. One reason is competition from the Senecas. They took in $58 million in food, beverage and entertainment sales at their two casinos last year.

• Sales and bed tax revenues collected by the City of Niagara Falls have remained flat in the three years since the casino opened. Property tax collections are up, but largely because of annual increases in the tax rate.

• Property values around the casino have increased but not because of new development. The increases are driven by speculators.

Seneca Niagara, of course, is more than a casino. It's also 26 acres of shops and restaurants.

And since late December, it is home to one of the city's newest landmarks - a world-class, 26-story hotel that single-handledly altered the image of Niagara Falls and created a new tourism market - the well-heeled gambler.

Still, the casino created cash for the city and state, and jobs:

• More than 3,050 people work at the casino complex, earning an average of $28,000 a year with $8,400 in fringe benefits.

• The casino, through its spending and its employees' spending, may be responsible for another 1,000 local jobs, notably vendors serving the casino. • The city received $9.8 million in slot machine revenue from the Senecas in 2003 and is waiting for another $24 million from the past two years. The state, by comparison, took in $100 million over the same three-year period.

Spending siphoned off

One thing is certain. The casino's impact is huge.

In 2005, Seneca Gaming - with its casino in Niagara Falls and a smaller one in Salamanca - tallied $498 million in revenue. That's nearly double the annual revenues of large local employers such as Wilson Greatbatch and Computer Task Group.

The company also made money. Its two casinos reported an operating profit last year of $144 million, or $2.7 million a week.

Not all casino money comes from the local economy, but most of it does. That's the rub.

A 2005 study by the state estimated the local share of the Seneca Niagara's annual revenues at about 58 percent. The authors of the study, the Center for Governmental Research in Rochester, think the same trend continues. If it does, that would put the two-county spending at Seneca Niagara at about $177 million.

Some is money that would have otherwise gone to casinos in Ontario. But most - about $101 million using the Rochester study's formula - is money previously spent in other ways, including other forms of entertainment, culture and recreation.

Yes, there are now world-class dining and accommodations in Niagara Falls. But it's all within the tax-free Seneca territory.

The casino is now a casino resort. In addition to the 614-room hotel, there are six restaurants, a 443-seat theater and retail shops. As a rule, its 6 million visitors a year stay within the resort.

"As far as we can tell, they drive to the casino and then drive back," said Kent Gardner, director of the Rochester study.

Retail operations at the two Seneca casinos rang up $58 million in sales last year, all tax free.

"It's the intent of the casino to hold onto its visitors, and this casino does a good job of that," Gardner said. "When people get hungry, they don't want them hitting the streets."

So what about the new hotels, restaurants and shopping centers Gov. George Pataki and others promised when he signed the law authorizing casino gambling?

"Thousands of additional jobs will be created outside of the casino walls as investors build new hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and businesses," Charles Gargano, Pataki's top economic development aide, predicted then.

An overstated promise?

Or a benefit still to come?

Four years after Gargano made that pledge, there are no new hotels and no major restaurants. And certainly no new shopping centers.

To help spur development, Pataki formed the USA Niagara Development Corp. and offered another promise, a pledge to turn downtown Niagara Falls into Times Square.

"We're still at the beginning of the beginning," said Christopher Schoepflin, president of USA Niagara. "The true impact of the casino is still in its infancy."

So far, development around the casino consists of an $18 million conference center, a $22 million upgrade in an existing hotel, a $7 million renovation of the historic United Office Building and a largely cosmetic makeover of downtown's Third Street.

There are plans for more. But right now, they're just plans.

Niagara Falls Redevelopment, a private partnership buying property east of the casino, unveiled an $800 million redevelopment strategy last year but has yet to build anything downtown.

"We view the casino as a positive," company Vice President Roger Trevino said. "It gives us a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year economy, which was not present before."

Trevino thinks the casino eventually will create niche markets that will lead to private development outside the casino resort.

The question remains, when?

Eating our own

In tourism circles, people talk about "cannibalism." The theory is that a community has only so much money to spend, so a new attraction might eat away at an existing one.

And that's the fear with Seneca Niagara and, even more so, with a new casino in downtown Buffalo.

Will a Buffalo casino take away from Chippewa Street or Elmwood and Hertel avenues?

Will it eat away at the Buffalo Sabres or Shea's Performing Arts Center?

"I don't see it complementing downtown, I see it competing," said local developer Paul Ciminelli. "Economically, it's a bad deal."

Tourism officials say there's no concrete evidence of "cannibalism" in the Falls, but restaurant owners disagree.

By now, many in the Falls know the story of Macri's Palace, the Pine Avenue institution that shut its doors last June and moved to Wheatfield. Owner Gary Macri was public in his criticism of the casino's competitive advantages, most notably free drinks and tax-free food, and a policy that allows smoking. "There seems to be an unlevel playing field," said Dominic Colucci, owner of the Como Restaurant, another Falls institution. "It's been very detrimental to the smaller restaurants and bars around town. People only have so much money to spend."

The other 800-pound gorilla is the Seneca Niagara Hotel, the city's first world-class luxury inn. It contains a spa, salon and enough meeting space to accommodate banquets, trade shows and conventions of up to 2,200. And believe it or not, competitor David Fleck wishes there were five Seneca hotels.

Fleck owns the Howard Johnson Hotel on Main Street and, while disappointed with the lack of new restaurants downtown, he's ecstatic about the growth in his own business, especially during the slow winter months.

"There's enough for everyone," said Fleck. At the Falls' larger attractions, venues like Maid of the Mist and Cave of the Winds, the Seneca Niagara casino is welcome, but viewed with skepticism.

Sure, ticket sales at the Maid of the Mist jumped 6 percent last year, but no one at the company sees a link to Seneca Niagara.

"There's been no spike at all in our business because of the casino," said Tim Ruddy, vice president of marketing. "But it's one more element, and the more reasons you give people to come here, the better."

One of the tradeoffs a city hopes for when it hosts casino gambling is more tax revenue.

The hope is that it may come in the form of higher property tax collections because of nearby development and growth. Or maybe increased sales or bed tax revenue because of more people spending money on hotels, restaurants and stores.

None of that happened in the Falls.

No new development

In 2000, three years before the casino opened, the city collected $22.2 million in property taxes, $12.5 million in sales taxes and $1.3 million in bed taxes.

Six years later, three years after the casino opened, the city's tax collections are virtually flat.

Sales tax and bed tax collections still hover at about $12.3 million and $1.2 million a year.

The city also raised tax rates each year, which helps account for a $4 million increase in property tax collections.

The reason, of course, is the lack of a new tax base, although speculation has fueled an increase in some values downtown.

In short, no new development, no new tax revenue.

"We all thought there would be more interaction with the casino," Mayor Vince Anello said. "I have to say, the spin-off impact hasn't been great."

Should the city and state have known better?

The state's own consultant issued a separate study on the idea of a casino in Rochester and warned of the perils associated with casinos that have their own restaurants and hotels.

"We've seen only a minor impact on tourism," said David Rosenwasser, president of the Niagara Tourism & Convention Corp. "Long term, I think the casino will help. Short term, people took some hits."

The one benefit casino supporters can legitimately crow about is jobs. Seneca Niagara is flush with opportunities.

At last count, 3,052 people worked at the casino. The Senecas' payroll is upwards of $85 million, and a full-time employee earns an average of $28,000 a year with $8,400 in benefits.

"They're probably the second-largest employer in Niagara County," said Schoepflin, of USA Niagara. On top of that, the casino and its employees spend money that creates even more local jobs. Again, a state consultant estimates that number at about 1,000, many of them with the 600 vendors and companies that do business with the casino.

"Our employees live in every area of the region and feed money back into the local economy," Seneca President Barry E. Snyder Sr. said in a statement last week.

The question is: How many of those 3,000 jobs are new jobs, given the large amount of local money spent at Seneca Niagara?

Even casino supporters concede that some replaced jobs that disappeared when local residents started spending at Seneca Niagara instead of the local bar or restaurant.

In a study for the state, a consultant estimated 600 of the casino's 2,100 jobs replaced lost jobs.

If that trend is true today, 2,200 of the casino's jobs are newly created jobs. Critics think the number is much lower.

The other boon to the city is the growth in its share of the casino's slot machine take.

In 2003, the city's share was $9.8 million. In 2005, it's expected to be $13 million.

Not a bad sum, unless you compare it to what the state gets. In just three years, Albany took in three times as much as the city, or about $100 million.

One thing is certain. Seneca Niagara generates a lot of cash. As Snyder said last week, the casino is one of the region's leading "economic engines."

The question remains, where will it take us?

e-mail: pfairbanks@buffnews.com

NY Times Editorial - "The Trust Gap"

2006-02-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

The Trust Gap

Published: February 12, 2006

We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.

This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point.

DOMESTIC SPYING

After 9/11, Mr. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the conversations and e-mail of Americans and others in the United States without obtaining a warrant or allowing Congress or the courts to review the operation. Lawmakers from both parties have raised considerable doubt about the legality of this program, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last Monday at a Senate hearing that Mr. Bush hasn't the slightest intention of changing it.

According to Mr. Gonzales, the administration can be relied upon to police itself and hold the line between national security and civil liberties on its own. Set aside the rather huge problem that our democracy doesn't work that way. It's not clear that this administration knows where the line is, much less that it is capable of defending it. Mr. Gonzales's own dedication to the truth is in considerable doubt. In sworn testimony at his confirmation hearing last year, he dismissed as "hypothetical" a question about whether he believed the president had the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. In fact, Mr. Gonzales knew Mr. Bush was doing just that, and had signed off on it as White House counsel.

THE PRISON CAMPS

It has been nearly two years since the Abu Ghraib scandal illuminated the violence, illegal detentions and other abuses at United States military prison camps. There have been Congressional hearings, court rulings imposing normal judicial procedures on the camps, and a law requiring prisoners to be treated humanely. Yet nothing has changed. Mr. Bush also made it clear that he intends to follow the new law on the treatment of prisoners when his internal moral compass tells him it is the right thing to do.

On Thursday, Tim Golden of The Times reported that United States military authorities had taken to tying up and force-feeding the prisoners who had gone on hunger strikes by the dozens at Guantánamo Bay to protest being held without any semblance of justice. The article said administration officials were concerned that if a prisoner died, it could renew international criticism of Gitmo. They should be concerned. This is not some minor embarrassment. It is a lingering outrage that has undermined American credibility around the world.

According to numerous news reports, the majority of the Gitmo detainees are neither members of Al Qaeda nor fighters captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The National Journal reported last week that many were handed over to the American forces for bounties by Pakistani and Afghan warlords. Others were just swept up. The military has charged only 10 prisoners with terrorism. Hearings for the rest were not held for three years and then were mostly sham proceedings.

And yet the administration continues to claim that it can be trusted to run these prisons fairly, to decide in secret and on the president's whim who is to be jailed without charges, and to insist that Gitmo is filled with dangerous terrorists.

THE WAR IN IRAQ

One of Mr. Bush's biggest "trust me" moments was when he told Americans that the United States had to invade Iraq because it possessed dangerous weapons and posed an immediate threat to America. The White House has blocked a Congressional investigation into whether it exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, and continues to insist that the decision to invade was based on the consensus of American intelligence agencies.

But the next edition of the journal Foreign Affairs includes an article by the man in charge of intelligence on Iraq until last year, Paul Pillar, who said the administration cherry-picked intelligence to support a decision to invade that had already been made. He said Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made it clear what results they wanted and heeded only the analysts who produced them. Incredibly, Mr. Pillar said, the president never asked for an assessment on the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion. He said the intelligence community did that analysis on its own and forecast a deeply divided society ripe for civil war.

When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.

•

Like many other administrations before it, this one sometimes dissembles clumsily to avoid embarrassment. (We now know, for example, that the White House did not tell the truth about when it learned the levees in New Orleans had failed.) Spin-as-usual is one thing. Striking at the civil liberties, due process and balance of powers that are the heart of American democracy is another.

State of the Union and the Democratic Response

2006-02-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

I was incredibly impressed by the Democratic response after the state of the union adress. I've talked to others who feel the same as I do. Here's the full text of that response.

I realy hope that the democrats adopt this speach as their election platform, because if they do, they will indeed win this years midterm elections and win big.

--------------------------------

The Democratic Response: Virginia Governor Tim Kaine

CQ Transcriptions
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; 10:38 PM

KAINE: My fellow Americans, good evening.

I'm Tim Kaine, the governor of the commonwealth of Virginia. And it's an honor tonight to give the Democratic response to President Bush on behalf of my commonwealth, my fellow Democratic governors and the Democratic Party.

I worked as a missionary when I was a young man and I learned to measure my life by the difference I can make in someone else's life.

Coretta Scott King embodied that value. And tonight, as a nation, we mourn her passing.

Our faith and values teach us that there's no higher calling than serving others.

Our federal government should serve the American people. But that mission is frustrated by this administration's poor choices and bad management.

Families in the Gulf Coast see that as they wait to rebuild their lives. Americans who lose their jobs see that as they look to rebuild their careers. And our soldiers in Iraq see that as they try to rebuild a nation. KAINE: As Americans, we do great things when we work together. Some of our leaders in Washington seem to have forgotten that.

I want to offer some good news tonight: There is a better way.

In Virginia -- and other states -- we're moving ahead by focusing on service, competent management and results. It's all about bringing people together to find common-sense solutions to our common problems.

That's how we in Virginia earned the ranking of America's "Best Managed State."

You know, no matter what political philosophy you hold or what state you call home, you have a right to expect that your government can deliver results.

When there's a crime or a fire, you expect that police and firefighters have the tools to respond. When there's a natural disaster, you expect a well-managed response. When you send your children to school, you expect them to be prepared for success. And, you have a right to expect government to be fiscally responsible, pay the bills and live within its means. KAINE: Tonight we heard the president again call to make his tax policies permanent, despite his administration's failure to manage our staggering national debt.

Over the past five years, we've gone from huge surpluses to massive deficits.

Now, no parent makes their child pay the mortgage bill.

Why should we allow this administration to pass down the bill for its reckless spending to our children and grandchildren?

There's a better way.

Two years ago in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans worked together to reform our budget.

By focusing on results, we were able to keep the budget balanced, preserve our strong credit rating and protect the essential services that families rely on: education, health care, law enforcement.

States all across this country are doing this right now, as the federal government falls further and further into debt.

Think about what's occurring in education.

The administration's No Child Left Behind Act is wreaking havoc on local school districts. KAINE: Despite the insistence of Democrats in Congress that the program should be funded as promised, the administration has opposed full funding and is refusing to let states try innovative alternatives.

Now the Republican leadership in Washington is actually cutting billions of dollars from the student loan programs that serve working families, helping to get their children through college.

There's a better way.

Last year, governors from across the country worked together in a bipartisan fashion to reform the senior year of high school to make it serve our students better.

Many states are working to make high-quality pre-kindergarten accessible to every family.

Congressional Democrats have a plan to educate 100,000 new engineers, scientists and mathematicians in the next four years. KAINE: And in Virginia, Democrats and Republicans alike worked together to make record investments in education.

The results: more accredited schools, better student test scores.

Look at what's happening in health care. Skyrocketing costs are hurting small businesses and pushing millions of working Americans into the ranks of the uninsured.

The White House has made efforts to cut Medicaid funds for our most vulnerable citizens. Our seniors were promised that the new federal Medicare drug plan would make it easier and cheaper to obtain their medication.

Instead, many have fallen victim to the program's poor planning. They find getting their medicine to be more complex, more expensive and less reliable.

There's a better way.

Health care reforms have to focus on making the system serve consumers better. Many states, following the lead of Illinois, have set up simple ways to help seniors purchase safe, American-made prescription drugs from other countries at a fraction of the price they would pay here.

And the administration actually fought against that Democratic effort.

In Virginia, we've worked to provide health insurance coverage for nearly 140,000 children who weren't covered four years ago. KAINE: And Republicans and Democrats alike have come together to fight the administration's efforts to slash Medicaid and push more costs onto the states.

The president called again tonight for our commitment to win the war on terror and to support our troops. Every American embraces those goals. We can -- we must -- defeat those who attack and kill innocent people.

While the images of the World Trade Center are seared in the minds of all Americans, so too are the memories of those who died on sacred ground here in Virginia in the attack on the Pentagon.

Our commitment to winning the war on terror compels us to ask this question: Are the president's policies the best way to win this war?

We now know that the American people were given inaccurate information about reasons for invading Iraq. KAINE: We now know that our troops in Iraq were not given the best body armor or the best intelligence.

We now know the administration wants to cut tens of thousands of troops from the Army Reserves and the National Guard at the very time that we're facing new and dangerous threats.

And we now know that the administration wants to further reduce military and veterans' benefits.

There's a better way.

Working together, we have to give our troops the tools they need to win the war on terror. And we can do it without sacrificing the liberty that we've sent our troops abroad to defend.

Our support has to begin here at home.

That's why we in Virginia -- Democrats and Republicans -- have reformed and enhanced our Department of Veterans Services to help our veterans and their family members access the federal benefits that they've earned. KAINE: And we're working to provide state re-enlistment bonuses to honor those Virginians who stay in service to commonwealth and country.

When it comes to energy, Americans are using more than ever, paying more for it, and are more dependent on the Middle East than ever before.

There's a better way.

Last summer, I joined Democrats in Washington and in other states and called on oil companies to share in our sacrifice and return some of their record-breaking excess profits.

Democrats at both the state and national levels are leading the way on energy reforms, calling for greater public investments for alternative, advanced energy technologies. These investments will promote energy independence, boost the nation's economy, create jobs and strengthen national security.

The failure of the federal government to implement and enforce a rational immigration policy has resulted in a confusing patchwork of state and local efforts. KAINE: Of course, we should welcome those who seek to lawfully join and contribute to our American family -- and we must.

But at the same time, we have to ensure that our homeland defense efforts begin with consistent federal action to protect our borders.

The administration is falling behind in other critical areas: preserving the environment, keeping our workplaces safe, protecting family farms, keeping jobs in America.

Our communities are then left to deal with the challenges and the consequences of these federal failures without a reliable partner.

But we managed to find a better way.

The better way is to focus on service. It's about measuring what we do in terms of real results for real people.

It's not about partisanship or political spin. It's about protecting the rights endowed by our creator, fulfilling the principle of equality set out in our Declaration of Independence, and ensuring that the light of liberty shines on every American. KAINE: If we want to replace the division that's been gripping our nation's capital, we need a change.

Democrats are leading that reform effort, working to restore honesty and openness to our government, working to replace a culture of partisanship and cronyism with an ethic of service and results.

Our greatest need is for America to heal its partisan wounds and become one people. You know, those are words Thomas Jefferson expressed after he was elected president. And they ring as true today as they did in 1800.

Tonight we pray, earnestly and humbly, for that healing and for the day when service returns again as the better way to a new national politics. KAINE: We ask all Americans to join us in that effort because, together, America can do better.

Thank you for listening, and God bless the United States of America.

Buffalo Lawsuit Challenges a Casino Off Indian Land

2006-01-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

Article found through Buffalo Rising, read their interperitation and the following discussion.

Buffalo Lawsuit Challenges a Casino Off Indian Land

NY Times
January 4, 2006
By DAVID STABA

BUFFALO, Jan. 3 - In the latest salvo between local advocates and government officials over this city's future, a coalition of citizens' groups, churches, business people and lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday to halt construction of an Indian casino on the Buffalo River waterfront.

The suit alleges that federal officials, including Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, failed to abide by a 1988 law regulating gambling facilities established off reservation land when they approved the proposed Buffalo casino. The proposed facility is one of three gambling sites in this region allowed under a 2002 compact between New York State and the Seneca Nation.

In legal papers filed in Federal District Court, the plaintiffs - led by a group called Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County - said that a Buffalo casino cannot be permitted under federal law, because the nine-acre site along the Buffalo River is not adjacent to an existing reservation and was not part of land claimed by the Seneca Nation.

In addition, the suit alleges that the approval process violated federal laws that require a study of the environmental impact of a proposed casino. The plaintiffs also say that demolition of a grain elevator at the proposed site would violate the National Historic Preservation Act.

"Some people have tried to make this into grain silos versus a casino, but this is a much more important issue," said Richard Lippes, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers. "These citizens aren't opposed to progress. They just want the right things to happen in the right way."

Barry E. Snyder, president of the Seneca Nation, was not available for comment Tuesday afternoon. But on Friday, he spoke dismissively of a possible lawsuit during the partial opening of a luxury hotel adjacent to the Senecas' existing casino in Niagara Falls.

"Lawsuits come and go - they don't interest me," Mr. Snyder was quoted as saying in The Buffalo News. "We took the opportunity to build a casino and hotel in Niagara Falls because no one else would do it. I've said the same of Buffalo, and we're going ahead. I'm a man of my word."

Proponents also maintain that the casino will create jobs as well as spur economic development in the long dormant area.

Several parties to the lawsuit, including Mr. Lippes and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County, also took part in recent years in two other significant civic lawsuits that sought to preserve land.

They were among the litigants who halted a state plan to build a marina, which would have been constructed atop limestone walls that were part of the original terminus of the Erie Canal, and a proposal by an international commission to build a steel bridge next to the Peace Bridge, which was built in 1927 and connects Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario.

In each instance, a judge ruled that the government agencies involved did not follow proper planning procedures. Both plans have since been revised. The waterfront plans, proposed by the Empire State Development Corporation, now include the restoration of the canal terminus and other historic elements. As for the bridge, a two-nation panel has recommended a sweeping cable-stayed bridge over the Niagara River.

"In both cases, we got something better," said Mr. Lippes, who served as general counsel to the primary plaintiff in each case.

Like the waterfront and Peace Bridge suits, the legal challenge to the proposed Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino is being financed in part by the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, which often provides money to educational or artistic organizations.

"We feel the need to make sure the laws are followed when making this kind of change to our community," said Janet Loew Day, a foundation trustee.

The plaintiffs said that taking the land for the proposed casino site off the tax rolls and creating, in essence, a tiny sovereign nation housing the casino would run counter to the canal restoration plans and other nascent development in the area.

Lawsuit filed against Buffalo casino - From Business First

2006-01-05T19:00:00.000-08:00

Lawsuit filed against Buffalo casino

James Fink

Business First

Saying they are "calling the bluff" of the Seneca Gaming Corp., an anti-casino group Tuesday morning took the first step in an attempt to stop a proposed Buffalo casino.

The group of local individuals, civic and political leaders and the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation Tuesday filed a motion in U.S. Federal Court in opposition to the Seneca's plan. They allege the Seneca Gaming Corp., the casino arm of the Seneca Nation of Indians, failed to meet several federal requirements and guidelines dictated by the Seneca Nation Settlement Act, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and other federal provisions. Seneca Gaming plans to build the 100,000-square-foot gaming venue in Buffalo's Cobblestone District.

The opposition group has also voiced concerns about the environmental impact from either the casino and the historic status of the targeted site, which includes the long-vacant, circa 1912 H&O Oats grain elevators.

"This is not a done deal," said Joseph Finnerty, a partner in Stenger & Finnerty, coordinating counsel for the plaintiffs. "Procedures that should have been used were evaded. The Senecas are dealing you off the bottom of their deck."

Representatives from the Seneca Nation of Indians declined to comment.

Seneca Gaming Corp. began work on the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino on Dec. 8, just 24 hours before a mandated deadline expired. The deadline was spelled out in a 2002 compact between the Seneca Nation of Indians and Gov. George Pataki. That deal cleared the way for casinos in Niagara Falls and Salamanca and a third in Buffalo.

Finnerty, along with other members of the plaintiff team, contend the casino will have a negative impact on Buffalo including scaring away companies and private developers from investing in the city.

Casino supporters say the gaming venue, which is slated to open next year, will employ more than 1,000 people and produce an estimated $7 million in new revenues for cash-poor Buffalo in its first year of operation.

Not so, says Finnerty.

"Good jobs will be driven away," he said. "It will destroy waterfront development and will not promote private development along its peripheral. It will kill it (development)."

While the initial paperwork was filed Tuesday morning in federal court and it has been assigned to Federal Judge John Elfvin, it may be sometime before the case is heard, or even the most preliminary of hearings is held.

Many of the litigants had not yet been served with notice of the filing as of mid-morning Tuesday and all will be given a chance to respond.

"You can't predict what the courts will do," admitted Richard Lippes, another local attorney involved with the case.

Esmonde Explains the Casino

2006-01-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

Don Esmonde of the Buffalo News is doing a good job of interpreting this casino mess that we are in. His latest installment doesn't disappoint.

Casino opponents on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to knock this casino nonsense off track. Some of the more ignorant Buffalonians (or Buffalo Wannabees) are calling them obstructionists and wildly claiming that those standing in the way of a casino are simply upset that they are not getting a "piece of the action". I wouldn't believe that people honestly thought this way if I hadn't read it with my own eyes.

anyway, esmonde's article is below, with some emphasis added by me, to highlight his responses to the most prevalent or ignorant criticisms from casino lovers.

(by the way I don't hate casinos, I just think it's basically a doomsday scenario for Buffalo.)

Casino suit tries to save us from ourselves
By DONN ESMONDE
1-4-2006

It is a chance to turn back the clock before it strikes midnight.

It is a way to ward off regret, to avoid yet another "if only" lament, to stop the train before it rolls off the tracks.

It is a move to avoid another addition to the litany of projects and "progress" that have hurt more than helped us.

Look at it that way and you will know why they are doing this.

A lawsuit backed by various local groups, clergy and private citizens was filed Tuesday in federal court to stop the Seneca Nation of Indians from building a casino near the Buffalo waterfront.

"The deal that has been done," attorney Joe Finnerty said, "is not a done deal."

The anti-casino folks are not anti-development. They are simply against something going up that they think, with good reason, will hold us down. The same charitable foundation that pumped $4.5 million into the bioinformatics campus is bankrolling the lawsuit. That's how much the Wendt Foundation, led by attorney and grandfatherly Buffalo icon Bob Kresse, believes a casino will hurt us.

"People want to fight this, but they don't have the money that the state or the Senecas have," said Tom Lunt of the Wendt Foundation. "A private foundation can take that [monetary] risk and give local citizens a chance."

The legal arguments involve acts of Congress and moves by the secretary of the interior. The legal arguments are merely a path to avoid what these folks see as another Buffalo blunder.

The problem with a place where so little development happens is that people get desperate for anything. But if the last half-century taught us anything, it's that not every project is progress.

"A guy I know said he just wants to see something happen," Kresse said. "That's ludicrous. The idea of the city [permanently] turning over land to a sovereign nation for this purpose is preposterous."

If we could turn back the clock and build UB in Buffalo instead of the Amherst marshes, we would.

If we could reverse time and not slice up a good neighborhood with the Kensington Expressway; if we could erase the mistake of cutting off precious waterfront with the Niagara Thruway; if we could not blight downtown with a monolithic mall, we would.

This is about stopping a mistake before, for once, it is too late. The clock is ticking, but the bell has not tolled.

The last thing we need is another hole punched in a nearly dry economic basin. Tony Masiello, Byron Brown and others tout a casino as a job-creating spur to development. Yet this casino will mostly be about local gamblers filling Seneca Nation pockets. The Senecas take most of the profits, Albany gets a decent cut for doing nothing and Buffalo gets relative crumbs - even though local folks will drop most of the money.

Experts say the jobs created at a casino come at equal cost of jobs in the community, because dollars dropped at the casino used to be spent elsewhere. And if a stand-alone casino spurs growth, you sure can't tell it by Niagara Falls, N.Y.

I don't blame the Senecas; they merely took the sweet deal the governor and state lawmakers gave them. Just as I don't blame the folks who are trying to stop it.

This is how it works around here. Politicians fail us, but enlightened citizens use the courts to make it right. It is why we will get a better bridge to Canada. It is why we will get a historic Erie Canal project instead of the bland landscaping originally planned. Without a lawsuit, neither one would have happened. Now folks are suing to stop what looks like another mistake.

It is not the neatest, quickest or cleanest way to get the right thing done. But sometimes politicians leave people little choice.

e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com

Bring Them Home: Murtha's Statment to Congress

2005-11-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

Bring Them Home: Murtha's Statment to Congress

Congressman John P. Murtha—a pro-war Democrat—gave a speech calling for the exit of U.S. troops from Iraq—starting immediately and taking about six months. Rep. Murtha had voted for and supported the Iraq war since 2002. His call for an exit from Iraq is a huge shift in posture for the Democrats. Murtha is one of the most influential House members on foreign policy—Democrat or Republican. He is former chairman of the powerful House Appropriations subcommittee on defense and was the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress.

Murtha cited several reasons why we should leave Iraq, including:

U.S. troop presence is driving the insurgency, making things worse, uniting insurgents.
Iraq can't stabilize with U.S. troops there. We are impeding Iraq's progress.
Iraqis want us to leave—more than 80% of Iraqis in one survey.
The war in Iraq is making America less safe—hurting our preparedness.
The challenges that remain in Iraq can only be resolved politically—not with the military.

(The full text of his speech is attached below.)

Murtha wants the troops to start coming home immediately, but he knows it would take several months. He expects that if troop drawdown began in January it could be done in six months.

It is important at this critical juncture that Rep. Murtha knows Americans appreciate what he has done and want him to keep fighting for an exit from Iraq. Will you help send that message to Rep. Murtha?

Here are some things you could do:

Option 1: Send him a hand-written note or card. Let him know that you appreciate what he has done and urge him to keep going.

Honorable John P. Murtha
2423 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Honorable John P. Murtha
P.O. Box 780
Johnstown, PA 15907

Option 2: Call his offices and thank Rep. Murtha for advocating an exit from Iraq. When you call say something like, "I want to thank Congressman Murtha for his stand on Iraq. I want him to keep fighting. We need him." (His phones have been jammed as you might expect. Try calling next week after you've sent a letter.)

Washington, DC Office of Rep. Murtha
202-225-2065

Johnstown Office of Rep. Murtha
814-535-2642

The terrain on Iraq has shifted dramatically over just the last week with the Senate vote and now Congressman Murtha's exit plan for Iraq. We'll be sending you more soon about how you can help force a change of course in Iraq and accountability in 2006 for those who got us into this mess.

Thanks for all you do.

–Tom, Adam, Rosalyn, Jennifer and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Friday, November 18th, 2005

The Honorable John P. Murtha
War in Iraq (Full Text of Speech)
November 17th, 2005

(Washington D.C.)- The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We can not continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.

General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, "the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency." General Abizaid said on the same date, "Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy."

For 2 ½ years I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason for going to war has been discredited. A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait—the military drew a red line around Baghdad and said when U.S. forces cross that line they will be attacked by the Iraqis with Weapons of Mass Destruction—but the US forces said they were prepared. They had well trained forces with the appropriate protective gear.

We spend more money on Intelligence than all the countries in the world together, and more on Intelligence than most countries GDP. But the intelligence concerning Iraq was wrong. It is not a world intelligence failure. It is a U.S. intelligence failure and the way that intelligence was misused.

I have been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed hospitals almost every week since the beginning of the War. And what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace; the devastation caused by IEDs; being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes; being on their second or third deployment and leaving their families behind without a network of support.

The threat posed by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must be prepared to face all threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say that the Army is broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made. We can not allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls at our bases in the U.S.

Much of our ground equipment is worn out and in need of either serious overhaul or replacement. George Washington said, "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." We must rebuild our Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in the coming decades. This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. The burden of this war has not been shared equally; the military and their families are shouldering this burden.

Our military has been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, and captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, with over 2,079 confirmed American deaths. Over 15,500 have been seriously injured and it is estimated that over 50,000 will suffer from battle fatigue. There have been reports of at least 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.

I just recently visited Anbar Province Iraq in order to assess the conditions on the ground. Last May 2005, as part of the Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill, the House included the Moran Amendment, which was accepted in Conference, and which required the Secretary of Defense to submit quarterly reports to Congress in order to more accurately measure stability and security in Iraq. We have now received two reports. I am disturbed by the findings in key indicator areas. Oil production and energy production are below pre-war levels. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by the security situation. Only $9 billion of the $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. Unemployment remains at about 60 percent. Clean water is scarce. Only $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects has been spent. And most importantly, insurgent incidents have increased from about 150 per week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over time and with the addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelations at Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled. An annual State Department report in 2004 indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism.

I said over a year ago, and now the military and the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won "militarily." I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is to Iraqitize, Internationalize and Energize. I believe the same today. But I have concluded that the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress.

Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, Saddamists and foreign jihadists. I believe with a U.S. troop redeployment, the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted shows that over 80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops, and about 45% of the Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.

I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free. Free from United States occupation. I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process for the good of a "free" Iraq.

My plan calls:

To immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces.
To create a quick reaction force in the region.
To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines.
To diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq

This war needs to be personalized. As I said before I have visited with the severely wounded of this war. They are suffering.

Because we in Congress are charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, it is our responsibility, our OBLIGATION to speak out for them. That's why I am speaking out.

Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME.

Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest

2005-11-12T18:53:00.000-08:00

Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest

By WILL LESTER, Associated Press
WriterFri Nov 11, 6:52 PM ET

Two crucial pillars of President Bush's public support — perceptions of his honesty and faith in his ability to fight terrorism — have slipped to their lowest point in the AP-Ipsos poll.

While the CIA leak investigation, the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and high energy costs have all taken their toll, the polling found the Iraq war at the core of Americans' displeasure with the president.

All of those concerns are cutting into traditional Bush strengths.

Almost six in 10 now say Bush is not honest, and a similar number say his administration does not have high ethical standards.

During his re-election bid in 2004, Bush skillfully wove the public's trust of him and faith in his handling of the terror threat into a winning campaign over Democrat John Kerry.

Now, 56 percent disapprove of the way Bush is handling foreign policy and the war on terrorism, the poll found. Overall, 37 percent approve of the job Bush is doing as president.

An AP-Ipsos poll last week asked people to state in their own words why they approve or disapprove of the way Bush was doing his job. Almost six in 10 disapproved, and they most frequently mentioned the war in Iraq — far ahead of the second issue, the economy.

"To use an unfortunate metaphor, Iraq is a roadside bomb in American politics," said Rich Bond, a former national Republican chairman.

Iraq has cast a cloud over Bush's public standing in general. The public's view of the likeability of the affable president has dropped from 63 percent in August to 52 percent now.

"The war is an overriding issue. Look at the body count on a daily basis," said Tom Rector, a Democrat from Spokane, Wash.

The president has vowed to stay the course in Iraq, bringing democracy to a country infested with terrorists and rocked by explosions almost daily.

The president gets credit from a majority of Americans for being strong and decisive, but he's also seen by an overwhelming number of people as "stubborn," a perception reinforced by his refusal to yield on issues like the Iraq war, tax cuts and support for staffers under intense pressure.

Eighty-two percent of those polled describe Bush as "stubborn," with seven of every 10 Republicans agreeing with that description.

Concern about the administration's ethics has been fueled by the controversy over flawed intelligence leading up to the Iraq war and the recent indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, a scandal that touched other top officials in the administration.

That loss of trust complicates Bush's efforts to rebuild his standing with the public.

"Honesty is a huge issue because even people who disagreed with his policies respected his integrity," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist from the University of Texas.

Bush, who promised in the 2000 campaign to uphold "honor and integrity" in the White House, last week ordered White House workers, from presidential advisers to low-ranking aides, to attend ethics classes.

Some observers say they aren't impressed.

"It's like shutting the barn door after the horse escaped," said John Morrison, a Democrat who lives near Scranton, Pa.

Some Republicans are nervous about the GOP's political position.

"A lot of elected Republicans are running for the hills in the Northeast," Connecticut GOP strategist Chris DePino said after citing "a waterfall of missteps" by Republicans. Bush and the GOP must return to their message that the United States has been safe from terrorism during his administration, DePino said.

GOP pollster David Winston said Republicans are hoping the strength of the economy and the upcoming elections in Iraq can improve the public's mood about the administration.

Many of those who approve of Bush's job performance pointed to his Christian beliefs and strong values, the second biggest reason given for supporting him — after agreeing with his policies.

"I know he is a man of integrity and strong faith," said Fran Blaney, a Republican and an evangelical who lives near Hartford, Conn. "I've read that he prays every morning asking for God's guidance. He certainly is trying to do what he thinks he is supposed to do."

The poll of 1,000 adults was conducted Nov. 7-9 by Ipsos, an international polling firm, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

___

On the Net:

Ipsos: http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions

2005-11-05T21:48:00.000-08:00

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions

By DOUGLAS JEHL
NY Times

November 6, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - A high Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl M. Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi's statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration's misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. That is an issue that Mr. Levin and other Senate Democrats have been seeking to emphasize, in part by calling attention to the fact that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to deliver a promised report, first sought more than two years ago, on the use of prewar intelligence.

A White House spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the D.I.A. report on Mr. Libi. But Senate Republicans, put on the defensive when Democrats forced a closed session of the Senate this week to discuss the issue, have been arguing that Republicans were not alone in making prewar assertions about Iraq, illicit weapons and terrorism that have since been discredited.

Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan at the end of 2001, recanted his claims in January 2004. That prompted the C.I.A. , a month later, to recall all intelligence reports based on his statements, a fact recorded in a footnote to the report issued by the Sept. 11 commission.

Mr. Libi was not alone among intelligence sources later determined to have been fabricating accounts. Among others, an Iraqi exile whose code name was Curveball was the primary source for what proved to be false information about Iraq and mobile biological weapons labs. And American military officials cultivated ties with Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group, who has been accused of feeding the Pentagon misleading information in urging war.

The report issued by the Senate intelligence committee in July 2004 questioned whether some versions of intelligence report prepared by the C.I.A. in late 2002 and early 2003 raised sufficient questions about the reliability of Mr. Libi's claims.

But neither that report nor another issued by the Sept. 11 commission made any reference to the existence of the earlier and more skeptical 2002 report by the D.I.A., which supplies intelligence to military commanders and national security policy makers. As an official intelligence report, labeled DITSUM No. 044-02, the document would have circulated widely within the government, and it would have been available to the C.I.A., the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies. It remains unclear whether the D.I.A. document was provided to the Senate panel.

In outlining reasons for its skepticism, the D.I.A. report noted that Mr. Libi's claims lacked specific details about the Iraqis involved, the illicit weapons used and the location where the training was to have taken place.

"It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," the February 2002 report said. "Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest."

Mr. Powell relied heavily on accounts provided by Mr. Libi for his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, saying that he was tracing "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda."

At the time of Mr. Powell's speech, an unclassified statement by the C.I.A. described the reporting, now known to have been from Mr. Libi, as "credible." But Mr. Levin said he had learned that a classified C.I.A. assessment at the time went on to state that "the source was not in a position to know if any training had taken place."

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Levin also called attention to another portion of the D.I.A. report, which expressed skepticism about the idea of close collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, an idea that was never substantiated by American intelligence agencies but was a pillar of the administration's prewar claims.

"Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements," the D.I.A. report said in one of two declassified paragraphs. "Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control."

At the time of his capture, Mr. Libi was the most senior Qaeda official in American custody. The D.I.A. document gave no indication of where he was being held, or what interrogation methods were used on him.

Mr. Libi remains in custody, apparently at in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he was sent in 2003, according to government officials.

Buffalo News is part of the Problem

2005-10-31T05:58:00.000-08:00

The Buffalo News is part of the Problem

While the public is screaming for an alternative to the corrupt political machine that has lead Buffalo and Erie County into the ground, The Buffalo News refuses to report anything substantive about the two Mayoral candidates that are challenging the Democratic and Republican front-runners.

Below are a brief statistical analysis of the Buffalo News’ coverage of the candidates over the past 6 months, and a critical analysis of their coverage of the two mayoral debates.

This is the number of times over the past 6 months that a candidate’s name has appeared in a Buffalo News article.

Byron Brown	213 times
Kevin Helfer	122 times
Judith/Judy Einach	40 times
Charles/Charlie Flynn	about 40*

It is difficult to get an estimate for Flynn because there are a lot of Charles and Flynns in the city.

It is also useful to see how many times the News mentioned more then one candidate in the same article. If two or more candidates names appear it usually means that they are being compared against each other at some level. Comparative articles are usually more in depth, and placed more prominently in the paper. They also tend to be about more important issues, as opposed to an article mentioning just one candidate which might be a simple blurb about overcoming some legal obstacle. Brown and Helfer received 4 times more attention than Einach and Flynn.

# of articles mentioning specified candidates in the same article. Past 6 months

Brown and Helfer	106
Brown, Helfer and Einach	25
Brown, Helfer and Flynn	24

Coverage of the Debates

The debates are worthwhile to watch for the simple fact that all the candidates get equal time to express their views. However the Buffalo News Coverage of the debates was not nearly as fair.

The News’ Coverage of the first debate was absolutely appalling. The article by Anthony Cardinale was titled “Brown-Helfer Duel Enlivens Debate”. I understand people are on short schedules and only have about 6 hours to write a major article for the newspaper but seriously, Charles Flynn and Judy Einach were mentioned in the 13^th and 14^th paragraph respectively… and it was only a 15-paragraph story. We got a brief snippet of their opening statements at the very end of the article, at which point most people have already stopped reading, especially if they don’t want to listen to two political heavyweights take cheap shots at each other.

Some of the more interesting questions and answers were addressed, such as Brown’s union ties and Palidino’s sponsorship of Helfer’s campaign. However, as I watched the debate the two minor candidates were far more interesting than Brown and Helfer, yet they were given a measly amount of space. They were offering innovative solutions to key problems in the city. For example, if we want to create jobs why not focus on allowing entrepreneurs and small businesses start and expand their businesses instead of trying to lure in national and multinational corporations, that are not tied to our community and whose profits go out of town.

When people asked me what I thought about the debate I said that I was glad we had Flynn and Einach there, because they actually discussed the issues and enriched the discussion. I fear how little would have been discussed if it was only Brown and Helfer bantering back and forth and spending their energy on trivial accusations.

Some people may get excited about watching Brown and Helfer try to beat the other guy down as if this was some sort of wrestling match, but most of buffalo is turned off by it, and it’s a poor way to frame an article.

The News and Mr. Cardinale learned some lessons after their first article and didn’t make as many mistakes in the article “Mayoral hopefuls debate issues one last time before election: Brown ignores gibes from opponent Helfer” published today. They actually gave a synopsis of the opening statements in the first 7 paragraphs. Einach was mentioned 5 times and Flynn 4 throughout the 850 word story, although that’s about half the attention that both Brown and Helfer received.

The article was still framed as a battle, and biased toward Brown, mentioning the Buffalo news recent poll that heavily favored Brown. And also mentioning his endorsement by respected state comptroller Alan G. Hevesi, both of which had nothing to do with the story. Also an obvious omission in the piece was Brown’s refusal to answer a question about the downfalls of a casino and how he would deal with them, instead Brown chose to list the same positives he mentioned last week. Brown was then directly asked to answer the question and didn’t, annoying many members of the audience, and leaving a lasting impression.

Don’t trust the Buffalo News to give you a fair account of area politics. If you want to know what happened at the debates watch the video. And if you want to learn about the candidates you have to go to their websites or ask them directly. Especially if you want to know about Judy Einach and Charles Flynn, because the news won’t cover them. The News will not and cannot give you the whole story, so don’t let them frame the discussion for you. Listen to the interviews and visit the websites. And no matter how many times Helfer and Brown say “my opponent” remember that they have three opponents, there are four candidates in this race. Don’t be fooled.

Article Posted on WNY Media.net

The Casino is not a Done Deal

2005-10-31T05:44:00.000-08:00

The Casino is not a Done Deal

By David Coffee

10-18-2005

The casino in Buffalo... there's a lot to the issue but one thing about it is really offending me right now, NOBODY ASKED US! The governor woke up one morning and said "I know how I'm going to close the gap in our budget, I'm take a piece of Buffalo and give it away to a sovereign nation. They can take the land right off of the tax rolls and make $150 million off of it each year from a casino.” but the really outrageous thing is that he didn’t ask Buffalo, Erie county, or even the state legislature. And he sure as hell didn’t use a referendum to ask us, the people who live here. Seriously, I’m outraged.

Especially since Buffalo is not doing bad right now, there’s actually a lot of old architectural gems being renovated and turned into mixed use apartments and commercial buildings. And new buildings are even starting to fill in the parking lots. The nice areas of the city are actually growing, as more people are moving into the downtown neighborhoods. Main St is improving from the theatre district past the medical campus and all the way up to the Artspace lofts project near Summer St. There’s also the interesting Health Now building right behind City Hall and all kinds of stuff is happening. All we need is for the government not to screw it up. You can read about the new developments at Buffalo Rising’s City page http://www.buffalorising.com/city/ .

Now is not the time to be giving pieces of downtown real estate away to a sovereign nation.

The jobs argument is bullshit, look at other cities that have tried this, like Atlantic city, Detroit, or Niagara Falls, yes even in Niagara Falls at least two hotels and a restaurant have already closed, and they actually have tourists! By contrast 80% of the money that the casino makes in Buffalo is going to come from us, the local economy, and it’s not staying here, it’s going to the Senecas.

The casino will also be nicely situated at the center of all the bus routes, Downtown, where people who cant afford cars can easily get to. Not so with the Niagara Falls or Salamanca casinos. The poor in Buffalo are going to get poorer. I live in an inexpensive Allentown apartment, most of my neighbors in this building are poor, both white and black, I thought about them. Who would go, would they spend more money than they could afford, and what would they do to try and get that money back? What would happen to our neighborhood because of their poverty? I don’t like what I see, really.. more theft, more drugs, more broken car windows and missing stereos, more people outside bothering you for change, or asking you to buy their crap, electronics and fake drugs. It won’t be as nice of a neighborhood. This is one of the most pedestrian friendly and architecturally beautiful sections of the city, but people will enjoy it less, and less often, because they will be harassed and confronted by the struggling poor.

It’s not good, I mean seriously if you want numbers here’s some stuff from Donn Esmonde’s recent article :

The casino will make $150 million a year

About 80 percent of the people who will gamble at a Buffalo casino live within 50 miles of Buffalo,

The casino brings about 1,000 jobs (although at a cost of some existing jobs), with those workers taking home about $25 million a year.

The state gets about $30 million of the annual casino profits,

With the City and County splitting about $7 million.

But $25 million in take-home pay and a $7 million local cut doesn't balance the nearly $150 million we'll pay for it.

"The number one casino spinoff business is a gas station," Thompson said. "Maybe a restaurant within walking distance . . . Most people going to the casino won't do a single thing in Buffalo other than gamble."

If you read this whole thing you definitely care enough to call some representatives and say that if a casino is proposed the public should have a say,

There is a public comment period from now until November 7^th, you have to fax or e-mail Gale Norton, the Interior Secretary, she’s the one who approves land transfers. I encouraged my representatives to send her a fax as well. (FAX# 202-208-6950) (E-Mail: webteam@ios.doi.gov)

Also call your local representatives and tell them to introduce a bill to their legislature so that they have to address the issue and hear from their constituents about it. Or encourage them to sponsor a referendum for the people to vote on. Also give them the fax number for the Interrior Secretary and ask them to send her a statement demanding that this transfer be delayed until the local people have had their say in the matter.

This process is going way too fast, it needs to be properly deliberated.

We are handing over a chunk of our city.

You can find your city reps here: http://www.city-buffalo.com/document_6_3.html

County reps here: http://www.erie.gov/legislature/legislators.asp

State reps here: http://map01.elections.state.ny.us/boe/Main.asp

2005-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Casino's local benefits come up short

10/14/2005
By DONN ESMONDE

The more I talk to Bill Thompson, the harder I root for Joel Rose.

Thompson knows more about casinos than anybody this side of Donald Trump. The University of Nevada professor has spent a professional lifetime separating winners from losers in the gambling business.

Joel Rose heads the anti-casino group that will sue to stop the Seneca Nation from building a casino on the downtown waterfront, likely in the vacant DL&W Terminal.

Rose and his followers think little good for us will come of it. Thompson, the casino expert, agrees.

"The winners," Thompson said, "are the Senecas and [George] Pataki."

There are ways in which casinos work for communities: When most gamblers come from outside the region, stay a few days, leave money behind and the host city keeps a lot of the lucre.

Instead, we get the worst of all casino worlds: Mostly local gamblers who don't linger long, with massive profits going to a sovereign nation and Buffalo left with pocket change. It doesn't help the local economy, it hurts it.

Rose & Co. think they can stop it. If they can't, our so-called representatives in Albany ought to at least send more of the casino dough our way.

The casino will make about $150 million in its first year, the bulk of it going to the Senecas. Most of the money will come at our expense, because Buffalo is no tourist mecca. "About 80 percent of the people who will gamble at a Buffalo casino live within 50 miles of Buffalo," Thompson said. "The casino will make a lot of money, but it will come [mainly] from Western New York pockets."

Because most of the $150 million will be dropped by local folks, it amounts to a self-imposed tax. The irony curls your Ben Franklins: The idea of forking over another $108 million last year in sales tax sparked a citizen revolt. A Seneca casino in Buffalo will put a similar hole in local pockets - and the mayor leads the cheers.

I don't have anything against the Senecas. They got a great deal, cut years ago with the governor. It was rubber-stamped by the same Albany lawmakers who blocked the private casinos that would have done cities like Buffalo far more good. The Senecas are only taking what politicians who are supposed to watch our backs gave them. Unless the same state lawmakers give Buffalo a bigger cut of Albany's take, which they can do, the casino will suck more money out of Buffalo than it puts back.

Granted, it's not like we get nothing. The casino brings about 1,000 jobs (although at a cost of some existing jobs), with those workers taking home about $25 million a year. The state gets about $30 million of the annual casino profits, with the city and county splitting about $7 million of that.

But $25 million in take-home pay and a $7 million local cut doesn't balance the nearly $150 million we'll pay for it.

As for development around the casino, Thompson said don't hold your breath.

Add it up, and you understand why Joel Rose and friends want to stop it. Add it up, and you understand why Thompson - if the casino comes - thinks the state should fork over its entire cut to Buffalo.

"It's Buffalo that needs that money," Thompson said of Albany's $30 million share. "Buffalo doesn't need to send [casino] dollars to Albany that will then go to Westchester and New York City. The state should let the local governments keep it all."

Instead, we get pocket change after having our pockets picked. As they say at the blackjack table: Hit me.

Ouch.

e-mail: desmonde@buffnews.com

A Critical Look at the Race for Mayor

2005-09-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

A Critical Look at the Race for Mayor

by: David Coffee
September 19, 2005

After hearing the results of last week’s Mayoral Primary, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. In the beginning of the race we had over eight candidates, many of whom were political outsiders who were simply interested in helping improve their beloved community. They entered the race simply because they felt an obligation to do their part to help all of Buffalo. After the primary we lost our inspiring candidates, and we found ourselves immersed in the same old political nonsense, complete with name-calling and devoid of issues. We need to free ourselves from ‘politics as usual’ and the way to do it is to change our voting system so that it more accurately reflects the will of the people.

The Buffalo news on Friday described the Brown-Helfer mayoral contest as a battle between “two political heavyweights.” Now I’m not a gambler but I’m willing to bet that nobody in this city would describe their ideal mayor as a ‘political heavyweight’. That says a lot about the trap that we find ourselves in. Our system has lead us down a narrow hallway, and at the end we find two candidates that nobody really wants. The system is not working, so the responsible thing to do is change the system. I’m not talking about getting a candidate elected, I’m talking about changing the rules that we use to elect our public officials.

There are many ways to translate democratic intent into political representation, and statistically our Winner-take-all plurality system is the worst. Elections like ours use a very simple method to select the winner, the candidate with the most votes wins. This is fine when there are only two candidates, but with three or more there is a possibility that the most favored candidate will lose. A candidate who would normally win in a two-way race might have their votes ‘stolen’ by a third candidate and therefore hand the election to a candidate who doesn’t actually have the support of the majority. This is the dilemma that led Steve Calvanesso to drop out of the primary early. He didn’t want to steal votes from Kevin Gaughan thereby helping Byron Brown win the nomination. If we had used a system of Instant Runoff Voting this problem could have been avoided entirely, voters would have three choices, and they could vote for their favorite candidate without fear of helping their least favorite candidate.

It is very possible to deal with this problem. The most efficient and democratic way is through Instant Runoff Voting. It works like this: After the votes are cast, the least favored candidates are eliminated from the ballot until someone achieves a majority of the votes. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference, if their first choice receives the smallest number of votes and is eliminated from the ballot their second choice is used. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority. If Brown Gaughan and Calvaneso were competing and Gaughan ended up with the least number of votes he would be eliminated and his voters would use their second choice vote instead. The result would truly express the will of the voters, instead of making them frustrated.

Unlike the Runoff election used in the New York City Democratic primary, Instant Runoff Voting is much less costly or time consuming. The New York City Runoff election requires everyone to come back and vote again if nobody receives a majority in the first round of voting. Instant Runoff voting allows voters to rank their candidates so that they only need to vote once. If a voters first choice is eliminated they will use their second choice instead.

Why does it matter? What difference will it make? In this case, Calvaneso wouldn’t have dropped out. And voters would have been able to choose freely between three candidates without worrying about ‘wasting’ their vote or ‘spoiling’ the election by allowing someone to win with less than 50% of the vote.

We could easily use Instant Runoff Voting in our Democratic primary, or in any City or County election. It doesn’t take a federal or state law to change our system of voting, our community decides how we want to elect our own officials.

Think about it, does our current system elect the candidates that people want? What would happen if voters could record their true preference, rather than strategically voting for the lesser of two evils because they were scared of wasting their vote on a third candidate? And what about the candidates, would more people run? With additional candidates, would we talk about other issues and hear more diverse solutions? And what would happen to Buffalo if we had a vibrant public discourse led by the many candidates in each election? And what if our citizens could vote for any of those eight candidates without fear of their vote not counting, would thousands more people turn out to vote? I’m willing to bet that the change would be dramatic.

It’s not that we don’t have honest, qualified people running for office, the problem is that they are squeezed out of the race before the general public gets a chance to vote for them. Or they show up on the ballot as a third party that nobody acknowledges because we don’t want to waste our vote. We are all tired of the political machines, empty promises, and incompetent public officials, but we can’t seem to overcome them. We have good candidates but our system makes them so hard to elect. The most important thing we can do to get ourselves out of this mess is to change the rules of the system.

Buffalo Mayoral Race Article

2005-09-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

I put this article on here because it is terrible. It makes a mockery of our election system by launching it into horserace/boxing-match mode only a day after the primary. It's a terrible example of journalism and election coverage, I hope all journalism students read this garbage and vow to save us from such nonsense journalism.

Now, the main event

FOCUS: BUFFALO MAYORAL RACE

With two political heavyweights left standing, the Brown-Helfer contest to control City Hall immediately takes a pointedly personal turn

By ROBERT J. McCARTHY and GENE WARNER
News Staff Reporters
9/15/2005

A new Byron W. Brown hit the campaign trail Wednesday, substituting fiery campaign attacks for the genteel demeanor that marked his successful primary campaign for mayor of Buffalo.

That new development, many campaign observers say, suggests strongly that the Democratic nominee knows that he is in for a tough challenge from Republican Kevin J. Helfer.

The general campaign dawned Wednesday with Brown referring to Helfer's criticisms as lies, and Helfer firing back with accusations that the state senator is tied too closely to special interests.

"You've got one candidate that's lying," Brown said.

"Nothing makes me madder than someone calling me a liar when they don't have the facts to back it up," Helfer replied.

That kicked off a campaign already displaying a new dynamic and accompanying questions, including:

• Nearly 41 percent of Democrats voted against Brown in the primary.

Where will they land Nov. 8?

• Helfer's apparent victory over Brown on the Conservative line, providing momentum and an alternative line for Democrats to cast a Helfer vote.

Will Democrats opt for a line with long ties to Republicans and President Bush?

• Charles J. Flynn apparently winning the Independence line for the November election.

Will he diffuse the anti-Brown vote or make little difference?

• The 22 percent turnout in the primary election, signaling vast indifference.

Will a low turnout in the African-American community cause a problem for Brown in November?

Even before primary day ended, the election took on a harder edge, when the Helfer camp bought an 11 p.m. television ad that targeted Brown's campaign contributions from special interests, including $3,300 that the ad said was donated by Erie County Executive Joel A. Giambra.

Twelve hours later, Brown turned the ad into the first campaign issue.

"Seconds after my Democratic primary win last night, Joel Giambra's former $120,000-a-year commissioner of social services began with a very negative campaign ad linking me with his former boss, Joel Giambra," Brown said. "I think you're going to see a campaign in which Kevin Helfer tries to distort and lie about my record, and I will tell the truth about his."

Helfer fired back during an afternoon news conference in the driveway of his University District home.

"If he says we're lying, tell me what we're lying about," Helfer said, contending that Brown has accepted campaign contributions from every special interest group, from every group that wants to preserve the status quo.

"He wants to run away from the facts. The fact is, he took $3,300 [in campaign contributions] from Joel Giambra."

Focus on Giambra ties

If the first hours of the general election campaign for mayor were any indication, Brown and Helfer seem to be waging a battle to see who can distance himself the furthest from Giambra.

Brown called it laughable that Helfer would try to link him to Giambra.

"Kevin Helfer was a department head in the Giambra administration that created the worst fiscal mess in the history of Erie County," Brown said in a lengthy telephone interview. "The county is still suffering from the Giambra-Helfer mess. I think that speaks volumes about how Kevin Helfer would lead."

Helfer replied that he stepped away from the Giambra administration when he didn't like the direction in which it was heading.

"Not too many people step away from a $120,000 job," he said.

Vowing to be bold and aggressive in his campaign, Helfer said he wanted to talk about Brown's record in the State Senate, citing what he called his 130 votes to raise taxes and his votes to approve $4.7 billion in taxes.

"I don't think that's nasty," he said about such campaigning. "I think that's a campaign talking about the facts. . . . I'm looking forward to making sure everyone knows his record."

When asked to talk about the choice facing Buffalo voters in November, Brown played up the Democratic-Republican issue, while Helfer framed the election more in terms of the status quo versus change.

"Not a coronation'

"I think the clearest, sharpest difference will be the real difference between Democrats and Republicans and the real negative consequences when a Republican is elected," Brown said. "There's no more glaring example than what Joel Giambra has done to Erie County, and Kevin Helfer was a major part of that."

Asked how he could overcome a 5-1 Democratic edge in registration in the city, Helfer said he has done it three times before as a Republican.

"We're going to overcome it, because I think people want change," he said. "They're sick and tired of the status quo and machine politics. . . . This campaign is an election to be decided by voters, not a coronation to be decided by kingmakers."

Helfer was asked whether the gloves were off in the mayoral campaign.

"We will take the gloves off, but we're going to hit above the belt," he said.

Although Brown scored a decisive victory over Democratic challenger Kevin P. Gaughan on Tuesday, Helfer's apparent historic victory as a write-in candidate on the Conservative line is pumping new life into his campaign. While nobody is predicting that the former Common Council member will beat Brown in the heavily Democratic city, the fact that he wrested the Conservative line from Brown as a write-in candidate gives Democrats an alternative line to vote for Helfer and provides him with important momentum.

Conservative line's value

Top Republican strategists also think the Conservative line will generate the kind of campaign contributions Helfer will need to challenge Brown on the airwaves.

"I think the money will come in," said Ralph J. Vanner, vice chairman of the Erie County Republican Party. "I'll be shocked if it does not."

Indeed, GOP politicians such as former Rep. Jack F. Quinn Jr. point out that Republicans can win in Buffalo, even if it requires a perfect political storm of unprecedented proportions.

"The fact that Byron's numbers were not off the charts, and Kevin has this alternative lever on the ballot, gives Helfer a real opportunity here," said Quinn, who regularly captured Democratic enclaves such as South Buffalo in winning six congressional elections.

The former congressman, now a Washington lobbyist, said many Buffalonians are familiar with the Conservative line and don't mind seeking it as an alternative to voting Republican.

"If I'm Kevin Helfer on the day after primary day, I'd be pretty satisfied," Quinn said.

Still, Helfer acknowledges that he faces daunting odds. The city holds a 5-1 Democratic advantage in enrollment, Republican officeholders are virtually nonexistent, and Buffalo has not chosen a GOP mayor since voting for Chester A. Kowal in 1981.

Big names expected

Joseph F. Crangle, a former Erie County and New York State Democratic chairman, envisions big names such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer venturing into Buffalo to preach the Democratic gospel on Brown's behalf. They will try to link Helfer with Bush and his policies and label the election a referendum, Crangle says.

"It's historic to be able to win a write-in vote, but the question is, what's the effect?" Crangle asked.

"I don't think the Republican-Conservative line wins a mayoral race in a Democratic city."

e-mail: rmccarthy@buffnews.com
and gwarner@buffnews.com

Anti-Terror Strategy in Doubt on 9/11 Anniversary

2005-09-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

Anti-Terror Strategy in Doubt on 9/11 Anniversary
by Jim Lobe
Published on Friday, September 9, 2005 by Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON - If U.S. President George W. Bush was counting on Sunday's "Freedom Walk" and country music festival at the Pentagon to revive the patriotic spirit (and rally his sagging approval ratings) that followed the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on their fourth anniversary, he is likely to be very disappointed.

And it won't be just because of his administration's fatal bungling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which will certainly overshadow the Pentagon's commemoration; nor even due to the growing popular discontent over the way things have been going in Iraq.

Although both developments pose potentially lethal threats to Bush's continued effectiveness, the president's management of his "global war on terrorism", which he declared in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is increasingly under siege.

Public approval of his handling of that war, which, in contrast to steadily declining confidence in Iraq policy, had remained remarkably solid over most of the past four years, has fallen sharply in recent months to a razor-thin majority. Recent polls have also shown that U.S. citizens see themselves as increasingly vulnerable to terrorist attack as a result of the administration's actions.

It now appears that much of the national security elite has made a similar assessment and, in an indication of the shifting political winds, is now more willing to speak out about it.

A growing number of policy experts are arguing that Bush's strategy for conducting the war on terrorism -- particularly his preferences for military action over "soft power" and for working with compliant "coalitions of the willing" over independent allies and multilateral mechanisms -- is in urgent need of redirection.

This was made abundantly clear by the appearance of a who's who of national security and foreign policy experts at a well-attended conference here this week that appeared designed chiefly to assert the existence of alternative frameworks for conducting the war on terrorism on the eve of its fourth anniversary.

"There is an emerging consensus that while a military response to 9/11 was necessary, it was certainly not sufficient for dealing with terrorism over the long term," said Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation (NAF) and the main convener of "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose: Towards a More Comprehensive Strategy.

"Enlightened diplomacy must be combined with a robust commitment to compete vigorously for 'hearts and minds'," he said.

Capping the conference, which was addressed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former NATO commander Wesley Clark, and Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, among others political heavyweights, was the publication of a statement by the new Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), a bipartisan group of former veteran lawmakers and top national-security officials, including half a dozen secretaries of state and national security advisers, that implicitly criticized Bush's conduct of the war.

Noting that "terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy", the statement stressed that success in the war will require "strong partnerships with allies based on mutual respect"; living up to traditional U.S. principles, such as the rule of law, in conducting the war, at home as well as overseas; and "breaking our over-dependence on oil".

In contrast to Bush's rhetoric about "evil" and "evil-doers" as the source of Islamist terrorism, the statement also stressed that "terrorism is a political act requiring a political response", which, in addition to promoting democratic institutions in the Muslim world, should also include "addressing legitimate grievances", the existence of which the administration has been loathe to concede over the past four years.

While the statement did not define what those "legitimate grievances" were, a number of speakers -- some of whom are rarely heard in Washington's more exalted and politically sensitive policy circles -- made clear that U.S. policies in the Greater Middle East should be included.

"They do not hate us for what we are, but for what we do," declared NAF fellow Nir Rosen, whose writings in The New Yorker about his experience in insurgent-controlled Falluja, Iraq last year won wide notice. "The American empire will cease to be a target when it ceases directly or indirectly to oppress weaker people or to support those who oppress them."

"The motives for Muslim terrorists directed against America are no secret. They are clearly stated over and over again by the most reliable sources, the perpetrators themselves," he said: "...Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Guantanamo, America's presence on holy Muslim land in the Arabian peninsula, and American support for dictatorial or corrupt regimes."

"An American withdrawal from Iraq and an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories to the 1967 lines would do more to fight terrorism than any military action ever could. So would American empathy," he said.

Similarly, Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago whose recent book, "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism", is the most comprehensive profile of successful suicide bombers, asserted that "the war on terrorism is heading south" and will likely continue doing so until Washington recognized that its military presence in the Gulf region is al Qaeda's "best recruitment tool".

Both Pape and Harvard University expert Stephen Walt called for Washington to return to an older regional strategy of "off-shore balancing" in the Gulf region, in which the U.S. would intervene directly only when the local balance of power breaks down, and even then as a last resort.

The Bush administration's policy of "going on the offensive" against perceived foes since 9/11, according to Walt, whose own new book, "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy" has won strong reviews in mainstream publications, has "made us look trigger-happy (and)... made (Osama) bin Laden's accusations that we wanted to dominate the world look correct".

These views were backed up by the findings of task forces, each made up of a dozen or more experts with a wide range of political views, that have worked on recommendations on the war of terror since last spring.

One group, chaired by Louise Richardson, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, reached unanimity on the necessity for Washington to be more sensitive to the causes of terrorism. "(Members) also reject the view that to address grievances exploited by terrorist leaders is to reward terrorism, quite the contrary, we agree that addressing these grievances is essential to diminishing support for terrorism."

Task force members, according to Richardson, also called "for undermining radicals and strengthening moderates (in the Islamic world) by re-evaluating our policies (and) addressing their grievances ...that serve to mobilize resentment," including resolving the Israeli/Palestinian issue that "would not satisfy the absolutists but ...would undermine their support by reducing the reservoir of bitterness among their potential recruits".

A second task force on grand strategy, headed by Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that Bush administration "had overreacted" to the 9/11 attacks by "turning its back" on many of Washington's traditional foreign policy objectives, including the strengthening of international institutions and alliances built up during the Cold War and making the struggle against terrorism the defining mission of U.S. grand strategy.

"The challenge is to get our priorities back in sync," he said.

© Copyright 2005 IPS - Inter Press Service

Osama and Katrina

2005-09-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

Osama and Katrina
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
September 7, 2005

On the day after 9/11, I was in Jerusalem and was interviewed by Israeli TV. The reporter asked me, "Do you think the Bush administration is up to responding to this attack?" As best I can recall, I answered: "Absolutely. One thing I can assure you about these guys is that they know how to pull the trigger."

It was just a gut reaction that George Bush and Dick Cheney were the right guys to deal with Osama. I was not alone in that feeling, and as a result, Mr. Bush got a mandate, almost a blank check, to rule from 9/11 that he never really earned at the polls. Unfortunately, he used that mandate not simply to confront the terrorists but to take a radically uncompassionate conservative agenda - on taxes, stem cells, the environment and foreign treaties - that was going nowhere before 9/11, and drive it into a post-9/11 world. In that sense, 9/11 distorted our politics and society.

Well, if 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

For instance, it's unavoidably obvious that we need a real policy of energy conservation. But President Bush can barely choke out the word "conservation." And can you imagine Mr. Cheney, who has already denounced conservation as a "personal virtue" irrelevant to national policy, now leading such a campaign or confronting oil companies for price gouging?

And then there are the president's standard lines: "It's not the government's money; it's your money," and, "One of the last things that we need to do to this economy is to take money out of your pocket and fuel government." Maybe Mr. Bush will now also tell us: "It's not the government's hurricane - it's your hurricane."

An administration whose tax policy has been dominated by the toweringly selfish Grover Norquist - who has been quoted as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub" - doesn't have the instincts for this moment. Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town.

The Bush team has engaged in a tax giveaway since 9/11 that has had one underlying assumption: There will never be another rainy day. Just spend money. You knew that sooner or later there would be a rainy day, but Karl Rove has assumed it wouldn't happen on Mr. Bush's watch - that someone else would have to clean it up. Well, it did happen on his watch.

Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep improving the U.S. infrastructure, and take care of a catastrophic emergency - without putting ourselves totally into the debt of Beijing.

So many of the things the Bush team has ignored or distorted under the guise of fighting Osama were exposed by Katrina: its refusal to impose a gasoline tax after 9/11, which would have begun to shift our economy much sooner to more fuel-efficient cars, helped raise money for a rainy day and eased our dependence on the world's worst regimes for energy; its refusal to develop some form of national health care to cover the 40 million uninsured; and its insistence on cutting more taxes, even when that has contributed to incomplete levees and too small an Army to deal with Katrina, Osama and Saddam at the same time.

As my Democratic entrepreneur friend Joel Hyatt once remarked, the Bush team's philosophy since 9/11 has been: "We're at war. Let's party."

Well, the party is over. If Mr. Bush learns the lessons of Katrina, he has a chance to replace his 9/11 mandate with something new and relevant. If that happens, Katrina will have destroyed New Orleans, but helped to restore America. If Mr. Bush goes back to his politics as usual, he'll be thwarted at every turn. Katrina will have destroyed a city and a presidency.

Waiting for a Leader

2005-09-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

Waiting for a Leader

September 1, 2005
NY Times

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care. Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

2005-09-02T17:16:00.000-07:00

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
September 1, 2005

New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out, cops turned in their badges and the governor declared war on looters who have made the city a menacing landscape of disorder and fear.
"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said of 300 National Guard troops who landed in New Orleans fresh from duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."
Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the fear, anger and violence mounted Thursday.
"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive," said Canadian tourist Larry Mitzel, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. "I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire."
The chaos deepened despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.
New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.
About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.
"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."
Col. Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police, said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers — many of whom from flooded areas — turning in their badges.
"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Whitehorn said.
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.
"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses."
At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up."
Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.
At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ..."
"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.
"We've got people dying out here — two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."
Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell — it's every man for himself.'"
"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."
FEMA director Michael Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.
Speaking on CNN's "Larry King Live," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the evacuation of New Orleans should be completed by the end of the weekend.
At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.
After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.
One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.
Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.
"If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be worse than what we've been through."
By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.
As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, but are working overtime to feed people and restore order.
A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings — and not all the crimes were driven by greed.
When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"
Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.
"I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there," he said.
Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."
Several thousand storm victims had arrived in Houston by Thursday night, and they quickly got hot meals, showers and some much-needed rest.
Audree Lee, 37, was thrilled after getting a shower and hearing her teenage daughter's voice on the telephone for the first time since the storm. Lee had relatives take her daughter to Alabama so she would be safe.
"I just cried. She cried. We cried together," Lee said. "She asked me about her dog. They wouldn't let me take her dog with me. ... I know the dog is gone now."
While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.
Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.
In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.
The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.
"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."
Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.
"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"
____
Associated Press reporters Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Robert Tanner and Mary Foster contributed to this report.

Life in the Bottom 80 Percent

2005-09-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Life in the Bottom 80 Percent
September 1, 2005
NY Times

Economic growth isn't what it used to be. In 2004, the economy grew a solid 3.8 percent. But for the fifth straight year, median household income was basically flat, at $44,389 in 2004, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That's the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.

Economic growth was also no elixir for the 800,000 additional workers who found themselves without health insurance in 2004. Were it not for increased coverage by military insurance and Medicaid, the ranks of the uninsured - now 45.8 million - would be even larger. And 1.1 million more people fell into poverty in 2004, bringing the ranks of poor Americans to 37 million.

When President Bush talks about the economy, he invariably boasts about good economic growth. But he doesn't acknowledge what is apparent from the census figures: as the very rich get even richer, their gains can mask the stagnation and deterioration at less lofty income levels.

This week's census report showed that income inequality was near all-time highs in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to the top 20 percent of households. And additional census data obtained by the Economic Policy Institute show that only the top 5 percent of households experienced real income gains in 2004. Incomes for the other 95 percent of households were flat or falling.

Income inequality is an economic and social ill, but the administration and the Congressional majority don't seem to recognize that. When Congress returns from its monthlong summer vacation next week, two of the leadership's top priorities include renewing the push to repeal the estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest of families, and extending the tax cuts for investment income, which flow largely to the richest Americans. At the other end of the spectrum, lawmakers have stubbornly refused to raise the minimum wage: $5.15 an hour since 1997. They will also be taking up proposals for deep budget cuts in programs that ameliorate income inequality, like Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans.

They should be ashamed of themselves.

Iraq heads toward Civil War

2005-07-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

this article is very interesting. I wanted to highlight the last paragraph where there is a very consise and eloquent critique of the war from John Reid, the British Defence Secretary.

The Iraq war “gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising, caused a major split in the coalition, provided an ideal targeting and training area for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists and deflected resources and assistance that could have been used to . . . bring (Osama) bin Laden to justice,”

Here's the article from WNYmedia.net

"Weekend of slaughter propels Iraq towards all-out civil war"
By timesonline.co.uk
Jul 18, 2005, 10:24

From James Hider

IRAQ is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend.

One bomber killed almost 100 people when he blew up a fuel tanker south of Baghdad, an attack aimed at snapping Shia patience and triggering the full-blown sectarian war that al-Qaeda has been trying to foment for almost two years.

Iraq’s security forces have been overwhelmed by the scale of the suicide bombings — 11 on Friday alone and many more over the weekend — ordered by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias,” Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament.

Sheikh al-Saghir is close to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the supreme Shia spiritual leader and moderate who has so far managed to restrain powerful Shia militias from undertaking any outright attack on Sunni insurgents. His warning suggests that the Shia leadership may be losing its grip over Shias who in private often call for an armed backlash against their Sunni assailants.

Eyewitness accounts of the London Blasts

2005-07-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian of London:

Eyewitness
'I thought I was going to die'

Accounts from people who witnessed the explosions in central London today

Thursday July 7, 2005

Tube between King's Cross and Russell Square

"I was in a tube at King's Cross when one of the explosions happened. I was stuck in a smoke-filled, blackened tube that reeked of burning for over 30 minutes. So many people were hysterical. I truly thought I was going to die and was just hoping it would be from smoke inhalation and not fire. I felt genuine fear but kept calm.

Eventually people smashed through the windows and we were lifted out all walked up the tunnel to the station. There was chaos outside and I started to walk down Euston Road (my face and clothes were black) towards work and all of a sudden there was another huge bang and people started running up the road in the opposite direction to where I was walking and screaming and crying. I now realise this must have been one of the buses exploding."
Jo Herbert

"Everything was normal. Suddenly there was a massive bang, the train jolted. There was immediately smoke everywhere and it was hot and everybody panicked. People started screaming and crying."
BBC worker, Jacqui Head, who was on a Piccadilly Line train at King's Cross

"I was on the southbound Piccadilly line, between King's Cross and Russell Square this morning, when the incident occurred. At just after nine, there was an almighty bang and the train came to a sudden stop. The lights in the carriage went out and the air became thick with dust and soot ... We left the train within around half an hour. I feel very lucky."
John Sandy

"I was on a Piccadilly line tube train in between King's Cross and Russell Square, about 8.45 this morning. There was a sudden explosion, the train stopped immediately in the middle of the tunnel and the power went out. The explosion didn't sound like a bomb, more a loud power surge - but almost straight away our packed carriage started to fill with smoke, and people panicked immediately.

"We walked down the tunnel to the platform at King's Cross and climbed up. We had no idea at this point that it was anything other than an isolated accident, but it was terrifying nonetheless. No one was really control at the station exit - we all just wandered out onto the street as we could."
Richard South

Russell Square and Tavistock Square

"I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double-decker bus was in the air ... It was a massive explosion and there were papers and half a bus flying through the air, I think it was the number 205. There must be a lot of people dead as all the buses were packed, they had been turning people away from the tube stops. We were about 20 metres away, that was all."
Belinda Seabrook, who was on a bus travelling from Euston to Russell Square, London

"As I was heading toward Euston I heard a bang behind me, turning round I saw a huge cloud of smoke and what looked like a truck that was mangled and twisted somehow. I knew straight away that it was a bomb. "Everyone started running and screaming. I did the same and just tried to get away."
John Kelly

Read the Full Article

Our new Apartment

2005-06-02T20:59:00.000-07:00

lroom2
Originally uploaded by dcoffee.

We moved into our cute Allentown apartment recently. The neighborhood is old and beautiful, and the retail is incredably vibrant. we have tons of restauraunts and all types of things a short walk away. it's fantastic. I'll be posting more pictures soon.

Flickr is Fun?

2005-06-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

tower
Originally uploaded by dcoffee.

trying this out to see how it works.
Here is a picture taken while a group and I were touring Buffalo with the Mayor. This was taken from the kitchen window of one of the great appartments at the Holling Press building downtown.

British Iraq Memo

2005-05-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

Minutes of a British meeting where Tony Blair and other officials discussed the possibility of the US going to war with Iraq were recently leaked to the London times. The memo includes a top level British inelegance officer recounting his recent visit to Washington to discuss the Iraq situation. The intelligence officer said the following:

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read more:

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=426&row=0

http://www.guerrillanews.com/articles/1371/Smoking_Gun_Memo

Community Concept Paper

2005-05-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

Online Communities provide a new way to support social networks. Groups of individuals are carrying on conversations, planning events, debating philosophies, comparing research, and interacting more often because of the resources offered through the Internet. Online communities have emerged as a powerful way to connect individuals across barriers. Social networks have been declining since at least 1970 as people move farther from the urban center and join fewer civic organizations. Online communities have emerged as a way to reconnect people and get the engines of society moving again.

The first virtual communities such as PLATO and the WELL were created as tools for actual communities. They were used as a means for the group to reach a particular goal. For PLATO this was education and computer programming, for the WELL it was Grateful Dead music. Some of today’s communities have evolved far beyond this purpose and have become and end in themselves. Social communities help people keep in touch with friends and share information, they also enable them to meet friends and form relationships. The first type of community is like going to a meeting and the other is like going to a party. Yet despite this range of uses, online communities share some common characteristics, not merely in structure but also in the impacts they have on users and groups. Online communities appeal to users for diverse reasons, but they also hold some very real benefits for groups that use them. Western New York and The Peace Center could gain a lot by starting an online community of its own.

There are countless online communities in existence, some are purely social such as MySpace which calls itself “a place for friends”. Others like the ones used by MoveOn and the Guerrilla News Network are used as organizing and brainstorming tools. MoveOn uses the forum as a way to get feedback from users. The directors of MoveOn pay close attention to the conversations and take note of ideas that gain wide support. People talk about social and political issues that are important to them, but they also discuss strategies for addressing those issues and achieving positive change. Through using the forum MoveOn has an open line of communication with its members. This communication helps the group to set priorities and produce innovative ideas.

From the MoveOn example we can begin to see the potential benefits of forming an online community in connection with the WNY Peace Center. Instead of just having 4 large open meetings per year, the center could host a permanent meeting online. This would enable members to be in constant contact with each other and with the Peace Center leadership. Increasing communication throughout the Peace Center has many obvious benefits, and online communities are an easy way to achieve that goal.

Currently the peace center uses face-to-face meetings, organized events and executive e-mails for communication. An online message board would open another line of interaction. Unlike e-mail, group members and administrators would have equal access, and as opposed to meetings and events the message board is permanent and it requires much less time and effort to organize. Message boards operate much like a conversation except they span days rather than hours. Currently conversations within the Peace Center are only happening at meetings and social gatherings.

Participants in the message board could take part more frequently and in greater numbers than at other types of meetings. Barriers to access such as transportation, availability and time are lowered so much that members can participate multiple times per day. Although not everyone has easy access to the Internet, members would still learn of the most interesting online topics through their friends. If exciting information is shared online those who read it will pass it on to others whether through e-mail or in normal conversation.

Attending a meeting involves psychological barriers as well as physical ones. People may not feel familiar enough with the group to be comfortable in the close-knit atmosphere of a meeting. Their discomfort would be lessened if they were already involved in the group through the message board. Among those who attend meetings, some are likely to dominate the conversation, while others are silent. Members who are uncomfortable speaking in front of a group would be able to make their opinions known through the message board.

When members are able to participate regularly they feel more like a part of the group. The Peace Center hosts and supports frequent events around the community, but the benefits of events are different than those of conversations and meetings. Dialogue is key to fostering a sense of community. The bonds between participants in a meeting are typically much stronger than those between members of an audience. It is this growing sense of community, which is the chief benefit of a message board.

Message board users are communicating through the computer, but despite this fact they quickly become familiar with the community and its members. Participants in the message board check back often to see if anyone has responded to their comments, and through these regular visits they become familiar with the other members. One may not be able to put a face with what is written on the screen but through their comments we learn a lot about their personality. Online relationships develop and users begin to feel like they belong.

The online community I envision would not only serve the WNY Peace Center, it would serve area activists of all kinds. The membership would not be limited to dues paying members of the Peace Center it would be free for all people to join. It would be targeted toward progressive people and groups in the area. The message board would act as an information clearing house where people could be notified of upcoming events and talk about them afterward. It would also be a place where issues are discussed and where strategies and groups are formed. The Peace Center would create an online activist space where all groups and individuals could be connected. Throughout its history the Peace Center has been the area facilitator for all types of progressive action. The internet has opened up new ways of networking and organizing to advocate for change, starting a message board for area activists would be a positive step in this direction.

Kimball and Rheingold outline a number of good points in their piece “How Online Communities Benefit Organizations”. One of which is that they allow knowledge to spread quickly and reach those who can use it most effectively. In their words “Search engines find facts. People provide solutions to problems. Networks of people can solve problems for each other. Online networks accelerate and globalize the process. Each person in a network knows more than anybody else in the network about at least one special interest and can provide useful knowledge when questions arise concerning their area of expertise.” Imagine all the members of the Peace Center constantly sharing the most interesting information they find, and being available to other members who might require some outside experience.

They also enable people to connect across various boundaries. The most obvious and substantial boundary is distance. People do not need to be in the same place to meet with each other in an online community. It is difficult to choose a central meeting place for WNY Peace Center members because they are geographically dispersed. Some may have to drive an hour to reach the Buffalo Convention Center or the Peace Center office on Bailey Ave. While others do not own a car and the time it takes to travel by bus may hold them back.

Another boundary is language, English is not the first language for some members and it might be easier for them to write out their thoughts than it is to speak in a group setting. They can communicate more clearly in writing and others would better understand their thoughts when they are not distorted by an accent. Prejudice is also avoided. For example an older member may not be as inclined to listen to a younger member of the group, and they could miss some insightful ideas because of it. An online community allows ideas to be judged on merit without the confusion of prejudice.

Online communities also provide context for the information that is being discussed. Unlike sending out a notice or another type of mailing those sending the information can get feedback and questions from the recipients. Because of this, information is more clearly understood. Also the people involved are more aware of their audience and can tailor the messages to communicate better in the future.

Additionally the various members will become familiar with each others needs. They realize what others in the group need to know and send that information to them quickly. The deeper the relationship between two people the more likely they are to share information. If one comes across a resource that someone else in their social network can use they will be inclined to share it, in online communities it is easy to get that information to the people who can use it.

Online communities create a shared social space. This can be compared to a park, a campus center, lunchroom, or a coffee shop. It’s a place where bonds between members are formed, and the identity of the group takes shape. Without these types of spaces people are often less comfortable than they could have been, because they don’t know the other people in the group. People are inclined to go to people they know for answers to questions. The better the social network the quicker and more likely you are to find answers.

Unlike face-to-face conversations the ones online are saved, this eliminates the need to rely solely on memory and notes for reference. Written communication stored online is easy to reference and navigate. This means that people are more connected to information they might need. Instead of straining to remember someone’s name it can be located in the exact same space where you first learned of it.

Through incorporating members of the group in its operation and its decision making process generates enthusiasm about the decisions. Top down choices made by a small group of leaders and sent out to the rest of the organization are not embraced in the same way that member created decisions are. Top down decisions have to be sold to the larger group in order to convince them that this is the correct course of action. We obviously achieve more innovative conclusions when working with a large group of people rather than a small one but expanding involvement also expands support. This type of decision making is easy to accomplish through online communities. Everyone in the group can take part in the decision making process and observe the evolution of the conversation.

There are some local online communities in existence that can help guide the peace center in forming their own. Two of the most popular are the SpeakupWNY.com message board and the BfloIssue Alerts e-mail group hosted by Yahoo groups. There are various types of online communities such as e-mail groups, chat rooms, newsgroups, weblogs, and message boards.

The benefits of e-mail communities include the fact that it is a “push” technology, meaning that you don’t have to remember to check for messages, instead they come to your mailbox. It is also inexpensive for people with high access costs such as paying by the minute because messages can be read and composed offline. You can also reach almost anyone who is online because one of the most common online tools is e-mail. However the downfalls of e-mail are substantial. An active group is encouraging but it can produce an overwhelming number of messages. Many people will abandon a group when it becomes too much to keep up with. This is a problem because activity is exactly what we are seeking in an online community. How can we have a successful community if we are forced to keep the number of messages to a minimum? Also conversations are not always archived as they are in most message boards. Messages are chronological rather than being organized by topic. Advertisers or “spammers” can send inappropriate or annoying messages to the list (Boettcher, 99).

Newsgroups are similar to e-mail except you need a newsgroup reader in order to use one, these sometimes come included in your web browser. You download the headlines from the newsgroup and decide which messages you would like to read. There are some important differences between newsgroups and e-mail. Newsgroups are not a “push” technology, you have to remember to check for new posts. And only the titles are downloaded at first, each message is downloaded separately if you want to read them.

Chat s a method of live communication. Users are online at the same time typing messages to each other that appear on the screen and are read by other members instantly. This is typically a more casual online tool. Chat works well when you are talking to geographically dispersed people who are trying to make a decision together. It enables users to have a real time discussion much like a conference call. On the other hand everyone has to be available at the same time. And people who are inexperienced with chatting may have trouble typing fast enough to keep up with the pace.

Blogs or Weblogs can also constitute an online community as well. E:strip.com is based around Buffalo’s Elmwood strip and is a good example of how this might work for the Peace Center. Blogs enable users to create a highly personalized online space. It is as if each user is hosting their own online community by starting topics and then responding to people who comment on their posts. Blogs are typically very customizable, users can include their favorite links, likes and dislikes, pictures, and even change the look of the page to fit their personality. People usually feel very connected to their blog because it is their own online space. Downfalls of this type of community include the fact that it is a top down community, the user controls what topics are discussed because they are the only ones who can begin a topic. This top-heavy structure inhibits conversation. Blogs are also divided by user not topic, so it can be difficult to find an interesting subject for a visitor to comment on.

The last type of community I will discuss is the Message Board. This type of community is diverse, there are different features that can be used and different ways of structuring the conversation and the way users navigate through the site. Message boards can be threaded, linear and mixed. Linear means that messages appear in the order that they were posted, threaded message boards keep your post with the message that you are replying to. The SUNY Fredonia Campus Greens website is a good example of a message board that uses only the threaded model.

Advantages of message boards include the fact that people don’t have to be online at the same time. Conversations can span days or weeks and remain online even after the activity has stopped. It supports talkative groups, without becoming difficult for users to manage because they can check the discussion as often or as little as they want. Lengthy and in-depth conversations are quite possible in this type of medium. And users have equal access. The downfalls are that it is not a “push” technology so users must remember to check it, although many programs are able to send e-mail updates to users when there is a new post. Also the conversations do not happen in real time, this may make it difficult to finalize a decision with all users present.

The purpose of the community should determine its type and structure. For the Peace Center this purpose is to achieve progressive change both locally and globally. The Peace Center works together with various groups on a great number of progressive issues. But the chief goal of the center is to take action and achieve change, all of its other roles serve to support this objective. As we consider what type of community would be most appropriate for the Peace Center we should keep its goals in mind. We have already discussed the many benefits that online communities provide for groups, now we move on to decide on a particular community and its structure.

The BfloIssue Alerts e-mail group involves many of the same goals and people that would participate in the Peace Center Community. Topics include preservation, community development, urban planning, local and national political topics, the anti-war movement, and other progressive issues. This group is an e-mail community, and to their credit it is quite active with users posting between 5 and 30 messages per day. Unfortunately that activity leads to a high number of e-mails with unspecific titles like “re: outer harbor”, these can become overwhelming and difficult to manage. Also the messages are not divided by topic, they simply appear in your mailbox chronologically. This means that old conversations are mixed with new announcements and etc. Users do have the option of having the messages delivered in a digest form, meaning that you will have only one e-mail with all of the day’s messages. But it is difficult to participate when using this format because you are a day behind the conversation.

Chat rooms are useful but clearly they would not serve well as the main feature of the Peace Center Community. Chat can be used through free software such as AOL Instant Massager if the format is needed. Newsgroups are very passive and difficult to get started because the software is confusing and foreign to many. Blogs provide a personal space for users on the web and are very valuable ways for users to get to know one another, but they would also not be a good focal point for this community. Message boards are the most conducive format for in depth conversation, and are good ways for members to meet and get acquainted with each other.

The SpeakupWNY.com message board is a great example of a locally based online political community such as the one I’m advocating for the Peace Center. The message board is truly a community. Many of the older members have developed relationships even though they may have never met face to face. And when they read certain articles in the newspaper they automatically think of the online community and the people who would be interested. Important developments are plucked from all types of news sources and posted on the discussion board by the hundreds of members involved. People become aware of the various interests and knowledge areas of other members and direct questions to those who can help. The members possess a wealth of information that they are willing to share with one another at length. Issues are brought to the group’s attention and then discussed, with different members adding some of their opinions and knowledge to the conversation. Concerned members of the community publicize little known events and government meetings, later the results of the meetings are reported and discussed by those who attended and those who did not. This community has become a shared social space for many.

The Peace Center Community would differ in some important ways from the previous examples. E-mail would be a supporting tool not the central feature. Administrators can help conduct the group through individual and mass e-mails. Newsletters could be sent out to remind people about the community and give them an update on what has been happening there. Many message boards also have an “e-mail update” feature that gives members the option of being notified when someone replies to their post. It can also be used to send messages to peoples e-mail if they have high access costs. Hosts may also use e-mail to communicate with members in order to encourage conversation or calm heated discussions. The e-mail list would not be public, nor would it be made available to members. This would avoid creating a hassle for members by sending them excess e-mails and advertisers would not be able to hijack the list for their own purposes. The e-mail list should continue to be used as it is now, a way to communicate important announcements to members.

The message board would be the main focus, but unlike SpeakupWNY.com the Peace Center Community would be targeted toward progressives. The Peace Center is a group with an agenda, and the online community would serve to advance that agenda, unlike SpeakupWNY.com which is simply an alternative news website. Having a progressive membership would eliminate the need to prove that for example, the Iraq War is wrong every time that a solution is proposed. This does not mean that republicans would not be granted membership, it means that the website would be designed in a way that makes it clear that this is a progressive community. Some conservatives may come and cause trouble but they would be marginalized by members and if they became belligerent their account could be terminated and their e-mail address banned.

Membership can be managed in a variety of ways. The community may require a visitor to register a new account before being able to post a message, or it may allow “guests” to participate without making their information known. Systems that ask for registration may let you post automatically, many will require you to verify your e-mail address, and some require people to wait until their account is manually approved by an administrator. Some registration systems also have waiting periods for certain privileges. For example you may not be able to post a new message for a period of time, limiting you to reading and replying to existing threads as is the case on MySpace.

I recommend that we require members to register but do not limit their privileges based on how long they have been registered. The community should follow a policy of reactive moderation (Eyquem 2003) where members alert administrators to disturbances, rather than spending energy filtering new mwmbers. Requiring registration ensures that people are serious about becoming a part of the discussion. Also if they are enrolled they can’t just post anonymous belligerent or inappropriate messages and then disappear. They will have to give out some of their personal information including a verified e-mail address which ensures that problematic members cannot re-register easily if their account is terminated. Registration also leads to the creation of personal profiles.

The online community will revolve around the message board, however I believe that personal webspace and customizable profiles are very important in fostering a sense of community. Members should be able to show some of their personality through their profile. It should also be a personal webspace where the member can publicize things that they think are important. They could announce their favorite websites, talk about groups that they are involved in, post letters they have written to government officials or essays and poetry that they compose. Members will use the space in different ways but it will be a place for them to express themselves as much or as little as they wish.

Member profiles would be very versatile and customizable spaces. They would be able to upload a small number of images, one of which will be used as an icon to represent them throughout the site. For example the icon would be included next to posts on the message board, this would permit increased familiarity between users. There should also be a space for them to post messages, much like a weblog allowing other users to give feedback. This space would be used for essays, poetry and other written pieces. A column for their favorite websites would also be included. In addition they would be able to format the colors of their profile in order to make it better represent their personality. The last feature, which is standard on a lot of message boards, is a questionnaire type form that lists things such as interests, gender, age, location, favorite music and etc. All of the profile features would be optional. The profile would not overstep boundaries of privacy by publicizing your full name, address or other things of that nature. Though personal information would be required for registration most of this would only be available to the administrator.

The message board and profile are the key features of this online community, but some smaller elements will be needed as well. There should be a way to send personal messages to other users through the website. Sometimes users will wish to contact one another privately, this channel of communication is most secure when it is done through the website. However members should also have to option of including their e-mail address, Instant Messaging name, and personal website address as other ways to communicate. Not every question needs to be asked on the message board, some people will know exactly which user has the answer and should be able to ask them directly. User accounts could also include a personal contact list that helps users remember particular members of the community.

The message board should have a simple layout that is easy to understand and navigate. Users with and without message board experience should have no trouble becoming acquainted with the community. I often have trouble finding my way around and discovering active and interesting topics when a message board is divided into topic areas. SpeakupWNY.com uses this type of division effectively due to their broad purpose. Threads are divided along political and town boundaries, this works well for them but it would produce great confusion for the Peace Center Community. My rule of thumb for communities that do not cover a broad and segmented subject matter like SpeakupWNY.com is that if you have under 100 messages per day don’t even think about dividing the conversation.

It is dangerous to split people into so many different areas. Imagine hosting a party with 50 people, picture them milling around a large hall observing the community and talking in groups. It is easy for them to join a different conversation because they can see everyone, they overhear laughter and parts of conversations. They can see which groups are enjoying themselves and feel comfortable roaming about. Put that same crowd in 5 different rooms, and people will move around very little. They will become comfortable in their room and rarely see what is going on elsewhere. If conversation begins to die down they might think that the entire party is getting quieter when in reality it is just that area. Many people would go home before peeking into another room. A message board is a community and it works in a similar way. I recently witnessed a talkative group fizzle out when it tried to switch from a chaotic and unmanageable e-mail list to a fragmented message board. As an active BuffaloWaterfront.com member, once I signed up with the message board I had trouble finding the conversations, people where there talking but it was hard to find them, and the community suffered because of it.

The Peace Center Community should be laid out simply. The home page should list all the conversations, and organize them by activity so that the conversation with the most recent post is at the top. When you click on the heading for the conversation you will be brought to a page where the messages are displayed linearly, in chronological order, as people actually talk. This is the easiest format to use because it is most similar to conversations as they actually happen. The difference is that these conversations stay more or less on topic because if someone has an off topic idea they don’t have to interrupt, they can simply start a new thread.

An often neglected aspect of online communities is that they need a host, not just an administrative authority. They need people working within the community to keep the conversation moving. Hosts should do things such as encourage conversation by asking leading questions, and avoid problems by ignoring inflammatory remarks and keeping the group on topic. A group needs a good number of hosts especially in the beginning when it is trying to get the ball rolling. Hosts in this community would be members who acted just like a part of the group, but who had agreed to check the site often and help start interesting conversations and keep them going. There should be a minimum of three hosts who are familiar with online communities and their characteristics, and are able to help create an active and comfortable atmosphere.

The Peace Center can create an online social space for WNY activists. The benefits of doing so are overwhelming. Activists will be constantly linked to one another, sharing events, ideas, and their passion for making this world a better place. This can only add momentum to the political concern that has developed locally and around the world. For newcomers not yet involved in politics, the door will always be open for them to hear an alternative perspective, add to the discussion, feel like a part of the action, and realize how much is going on in our communities. WNY activists are doing amazing things, and an active online community will help get people and energy behind them.

Boettcher, Sue, What types of virtual communities can I build and what tools are available? May 26, 1999,link

Eyquem, Michel De Montaigne, On Four Types of Moderation, October 13, 2003,link

Kimball, Lisa and Rheingold, Howard How Online Social Networks Benefit Organizations, 2000,link

Rheingold, Howard, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, 1993, HarperPerennial

Big Government vs. Small Government

2005-04-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Response to discussion board : “The question you should answer is: do you think government is too big, too small, or just the right size? (Any attempt to evade this question should be interpreted as "just the right size.")”

Big Government vs. Small Government misses the point, few things in life are that simple. There is no net quantity of government that can be added and subtracted to create some perfect proportion, government is tied into many different things and its role must be balanced across a complicated spectrum of issues. This is a whole can of worms that I’m not sure I want to get into but here goes.

Government is accountable to the people, corporations and private individuals are not, especially those with an excess of power and money. If you reduce the role of government in a particular area, that which governs your life will be shifted to private for profit interests, as opposed to our public representatives. This is good in some cases and not in others.

If this were a black and white issue where one could choose to have their life governed by either A) publicly accountable government officials or B) unaccountable private interests - who in their right mind would choose to simply trust whoever happened to be born into power to be the best decision maker? If government began to just get smaller, the power to direct society would be quickly concentrated in the hands of a few superrich individuals who’s position in society is insurmountable.

Anyone who is thinking that this is an attempt to evade the question is truly stubborn and hasn’t actually comprehended a word I have said so far.

Government’s role is to make life as enjoyable as possible for everyone in society, it is a noble purpose and if it is not being done there needs to be a change, but simply kicking it out of the drivers seat is not a solution.

Governmental policies should be directed toward helping entrepreneurs, small businesses, and the middle class, this is where that lovely free-market competition really occurs. Bailing out large corporations is a waste, if they fail it is their own fault and a better alternative will take their place. Also those corporations should be prevented from getting excessively powerful and therefore being able to threaten the independence of individuals in society (what is ‘excessively powerful’ will be forever debated and revised, of course).

On the other hand the barriers to starting and maintaining a business such as taxes and red tape should be as low as possible. People want to chart their own course in the world and they want to be able to build something they can be proud of, in this way entrepreneurs and small businesses are very important in regards to making life enjoyable.

I think the knee jerk reaction against government is due to the fact that we’ve seen it perform badly. Again changes must be made and it is our government and our responsibility to change it.
My final thought is that, perhaps government has preformed badly because it has surrendered its power to private for profit interests. Perhaps government is unable to do a good job because it is now influenced by those interests that we expect it to hold back. I say change the structure to get the influence of money away from government. It should be an environment where the interests of citizens are the first priority, not the interest of politicians or parties.

###

Important Congressional Votes

2005-04-11T16:39:00.000-07:00

This week there are a few important votes happening in congress, the Senate will vote on the Bankruptcy Bill, approving $83 Billion for the Iraq War (on top of $300 billion already spent), and the appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN. My letter is below.

I am writing to express my concern about a few upcoming votes, these are the John Bolton nomination to the UN, the Bankruptcy Bill, and the 83 Billion for Iraq Occupation. I urge you to vote no on all of these.
First the Bankruptcy Bill. My mother is 52, after renting apartments her whole life, raising me alone and completing her bachelors degree at 29 she is finally at a point where she can consider buying a house. However she has an outstanding medical debt from a period where she was uninsured, due to this debt she is filing for bankruptcy. Should she have a more difficult time affording a home? Doesn’t it make our society better when people own and take care of their property? The red tape she has had to struggle through this far has been quite enough, I cannot justify adding to the burden. Why don’t we spend our effort drafting policy that will enable all Americans to have permanent healthcare, instead of punishing individuals for a failed system?
In addition to that I know that credit card companies were behind the drafting of this bill and lobbied hard to get congress members to support it. I have no sympathy for these bottom feeders, they should alter their business practices rather than pressuring the government to take care of their problems for them. I do not want my representatives to stand up for a few moneyed interests at the expense of the greater public whom they are supposed to represent. I receive between 5 and 15 credit card advertisements per week, it would seem that their business practices are the problem, not the bankruptcy laws.
The second issue is the money for Iraq. The $300 billion that has gone to Iraq thus far has not been spent wisely and I do not trust those in power to do any better with the latest $83 billion. I am sick and tired of hearing about Halliburton charging $27.5 million to deliver $82,100 worth of propane, $108 loads of laundry and other overcharges from the likes of war profiteers. Do not approve this money, it is a statement that says that irresponsible spending has to stop. I do not expect the US to pack its bags and leave, but the department of defense should realize that it does not have a blank check for this war. After all it is congress that has the power to declare war.
Lastly John Bolton should not be approved. His appointment would be a step in the wrong direction. We should be working to improve relations with our neighbors, and appointing another belligerent spokesperson is not the way to do this. How can we expect countries to make the war in Iraq an international concern when we consistently turn an unsympathetic eye toward their interests?
Thank you for your time. Please make sure that each of my concerns are noted. I hope that I can count on your support regarding these issues.

Sincerely,
David Coffee

###

Buffalo Webring

2005-04-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

I recently found a web-ring of Buffalo Blogs, only a few are really interesting to me but nonetheless through browsing them I’ve realized that I prefer online communities that have something to do with my actual community. I like the feeling of meeting people in my city that share many of my experiences and live in similar circumstances. In a large community like MySpace there is the potential for meeting many different people and participating in a variety of activities, but the members are such a mystery, you know very little about them and you will probably never see them in real life.
It also takes so much effort to browse through such a huge community and feel like you understand the norms, and then it takes even longer to find people that share something in common with you. And after that is it even possible to have a decent relationship with someone in southern California that only exists online where one can show as much or as little of their true self as they please? That type of quest really doesn’t inspire me to participate.
I had previously enjoyed participating in the forums of the now inactive Fredonia Underground and thought I could get a similar experience from any other forum, like that of MySpace, but this has not proved true. The MySpace forum is huge, it is difficult to find an interesting topic and it is even harder to keep up with the conversation. It seems to take some serious dedication (and a lack of other responsibilities) to actually participate in the forums of such a large community. There may be 30 posts per hour on just one thread, by the time you finish composing any sort of meaningful message there will probably already be 3 new posts. Leading to a sincere lack of meaningful posts, and creating a situation that takes a lot of effort to keep up with.
I can see how my preferences in actual community activities have translated to virtual communities. I am not the kind of person who enjoys going to big wild parties or bars where one is largely anonymous, I would much rather get together with a lot of my friends and a few new people. I will definitely attend larger gatherings, and I might go alone without knowing anybody, but there is some unique shared interest like a band or political speaker. These types of gatherings have an interesting focus, and the community norms are mostly familiar. It is the same online, if I participate in a large online community the focus will be obvious and the culture known to me. And small online communities of friends with shared histories and circumstances are very easy for me to participate in. If anyone else is curious about the Buffalo Blog/website ring I’ve found you can start browsing at http://wny4clark.blogspot.com/. And if anyone knows of an interesting local online community please post a comment about it.

Message boards

2005-02-23T17:49:00.000-08:00

Hi all, I’ve gotten very busy and I don’t post in this thing nearly as much as I used to. But I thought it would be interesting to note, for people in the Virtual Communities class, that my own virtual community project is finally starting to develop. I have been working on the SUNY Fredonia Campus Greens site for a little over a year, and for most of that time it has had a discussion board, recently that discussion board has been getting some use. It may be an interesting case study for people working on similar projects.

Over time I kept updating the site and pushing the discussion board more and more to the forefront, until there were three links to it on the home page (one of which was big and purple), and about 100 throughout the site. Still there was little to no activity. I had sent out e-mails to every listserv or friend I could think of, the e-mails sometimes led to a surge in visitors but few messages. I even got the WNY Peace Center to send out an e-mail to its 1,000 members, hoping the discussion board could be a regional meeting place, that effort led to about 300 visitors in 2 days and about 5 new messages, then nothing. You could find the site on Google or Yahoo, and the Fredonia website, it still didn’t take off. The site got an average of 5 visitors per day, sometimes 15 or 30, but people weren’t posting on the discussion board.

Recently I completely redesigned the site, I had to stop spending time on it but I didn’t want the site to sit idle. My idea was to make it as easy as possible to update, no HTML skills necessary, no bureaucratic nonsense trying to gain access to the code. The idea was interesting yet simple, I put the discussion board on the home page.

I changed the entire layout to use frames, converted all the pages, which was much easier than I thought, and let it fly. After a short delay there is now more activity than there has ever been.
I learned a few things through this experiment, and one very good lesson from the Virtual Communities class and Rheingold. That lesson is that you need hosts, more than one, it is very much like hosting a party as Rheingold mentioned, you need people to help keep the guests comfortable and entertained or they’ll just get bored and leave. I couldn’t really get anybody to help me host the discussion, and I think that was a major failing. Currently two other members are hosting the discussion (though I’m not sure they completely realize it).

A more obvious note is that the easier you make your discussion board to find and use the more people will participate. I think having the discussion board on the homepage has had a significant effect on participation. I had tried to figure out how to set up an RSS feed to send the headlines of the discussion board to the home page, but I didn’t understand how it worked. Now the discussion board is the homepage, and for a community like the Fredonia Campus Greens, I think it is working well.

Please feel free to visit the site and see for yourself, make comments etc…

http://www.fredonia.edu/sa/campusgreens/

Virtual Communities Essay

2005-02-14T17:15:00.000-08:00

Community is one of those interesting words that nearly everyone understands, but nobody can easily define. We use it and hear it almost daily and we’ve formed an abstract collection of contexts to which the term “community” might apply. But if we are pressed to define the word to a foreigner say, we find ourselves fumbling with terms like “group”, “neighborhood”, “town”, “area” or, “people”. It is a broad term that has come to define many things. We should recognize the roots of our understanding of the term in order to see how it applies to Virtual Communities.
We all live in a community, a neighborhood, defined by certain borders. In Buffalo you may say you are from the West Side, Lovejoy, or Black Rock. In the suburbs it may be difficult to view the whole town as a community, West Seneca for example seems better described as a town rather than a community. But within suburbs some developers have sought to create communities. Streets are laid out in loops, common areas are provided, there may even be a sign proclaiming the name of the community “Lakeview Manor”. There are also smaller versions of neighborhood communities, retirement communities, and religious communities like those formed by Mennonites.
Ones understanding of a community is surely colored by where they live. For example if you live on a close knit city street with a well used park nearby the term community will call to mind those people in your neighborhood who you saw every day. On the other hand in a remote suburb where people are physically separated from neighbors by distance, the school you attend and the people that you meet there may define your community. Or if you live in the country you may know the names of everyone in your community and the history of their family, thus you may come to expect a very thorough knowledge about those in your community.
There are also many types of communities beyond our neighborhoods. We may belong to a professional community that relates to our field of study. These organizations serve to expand our understanding of our chosen profession, but they also can provide social connections. These organizations tend to rely on mailings to communicate with their members, but often host conferences and provide other opportunities to get more deeply involved in the group. They may meet many times a year and therefore foster the personal connectedness that we expect from a community.
We may also choose to join a country club, perhaps we like golf or maybe we hope to make some business connections and attend expensive banquets. Whatever the reason these are often very close knit communities. People may chose to join for a specific reason, but I suspect that their relationship with the community is the factor that causes them to stay.
Baseball, bowling and other sports leagues are another example. We may join because we love the sport, or because we are simply looking for something to do, but the community is an important aspect. This is even more obvious when we consider little league sports. The parent encourages their child to join, is it for exercise, or just the experience of belonging to a community?
However these types of communities have become less and less common. Since 1970 the number of people in these organizations has been declining. However, recently we have seen virtual communities begin to fill that void. I think it is important to see virtual communities not as a new phenomenon, but as a means to the same end as traditional communities. People have used various means to develop their communities including mail, newspapers and telephone, the internet is simply a new addition.
One tends to separate virtual communities from the rest, in fact I just recently began to see how they are related and why we tend to draw a line between them. The element that stands out about virtual communities is that some people only experience the community through the computer. We miss the fact that many virtual communities offer opportunities to go beyond the computer and have some face to face interaction. Just because most people stay behind the computer screen doesn’t make these communities all that different from the ones we are used to.
Traditional communities are facilitated by remote as well. Professional societies frequently operate through mailing, magazines and other materials are sent to individual members, they are also invited to conferences and other gatherings but need not attend to feel a part of the organization. Similarly what I view as the most basic element of the community, the neighborhood, also uses remote means like free newspapers that are delivered to your door announcing events and community affairs.
However there are some things about virtual communities that are quite unique. The versatility of the internet has enabled different types of communities to form. The key ingredient of an online community is remote interaction, and communication. Some things clearly represent online communities, such as discussion boards. Also, any website where a viewer can add his or her thoughts is an online community, interaction means that you are not simply observing but that you have the option to actively participate. Blogs and News websites like Indymedia fall into this category. Websites allow viewers to participate in various ways, viewer comments and other activity may be more or less central to the operation of the website but all are online communities.
Defining virtual communities gets more difficult when we consider Instant Messaging, and E-mail. I view these as virtual conversations, rather than communities, but the line is fuzzy and pockmarked at best. Though these media function primarily to facilitate discussion in a mail like fashion between 2 people that is not all they are capable of. Instant massager allows one to chat with as many people as you like, either separately or in a chat room. It also allows you to exchange pictures and other files, you can also communicate through video and audio rather than text, and it has space for a personal profile that is available to anyone. More features are added regularly, and it is difficult for me to keep up. What may have started as a simple remote conversation tool has quickly expanded due to the versatility of the electronic medium.
However these are neither permanently available nor public, that is a key difference. When you exit instant messenger your profile is no longer available, and you can choose to remain hidden as much as you want. In these ways instant messaging and e-mail are more like conversation tools than virtual communities. They are more like the telephone and mail than a community.
Virtual communities and traditional communities have different features, but they have a similar meaning for people. They allow one to extend their social network and their connections with people. We are a social species, we like to interact with others, and we like to form bonds with people. Through virtual communities you can get to know people and share your experience, that’s why they are rightfully called communities.

State of the Union part 2

2005-02-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post I commented on Bush’s state of the union speech and said that actions speak louder then words, here’s an example. He said:

To keep our economy growing, we also need reliable supplies of affordable, environmentally responsible energy. (Applause.) Nearly four years ago, I submitted a comprehensive energy strategy that encourages conservation, alternative sources, a modernized electricity grid, and more production here at home -- including safe, clean nuclear energy.

But in reality the President promptly offered a plan that cuts -- yes, cuts -- renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by 4 percent.
Other interesting notes from the League of Conservation Voters:
Arctic Drilling
The President's budget once again assumes revenues from drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Perhaps nobody told the President that there are no revenues from drilling in the Refuge, since Congress has time and time again, rejected opening the sensitive habitat to oil and gas exploration. Didn't this kind of clever accounting get companies such as Enron in trouble?
Oceans
Late last year, President Bush offered a glimmer of hope for the nation's oceans by announcing an action plan to combat problems facing our seas. But environmentalists were wary, saying follow-through and funding was key. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Bush Administration's budget requests a nearly 40 percent cut to the National Ocean Service and slashes funding for the National Marine Fisheries Service by 12 percent. So much for helping our oceans...
National Parks
A modest increase to address a backlog in maintenance in the National Park system comes up woefully short of what is needed. President Bush has fallen $4 billion short of his 2000 campaign pledge of $5 billion to take care of the problem.

2nd Topic for Virtual Communities

2005-02-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

I have joined two communities but I’m not sure that they are what I’m looking for so I may join another. I joined MySpace because I was invited by my friend, he started a group within the MySpace community called Buffalo Activists and he urged me to join. I expected to have some interesting discussions and get to know some people I had seen around Buffalo.
I also joined the Randi Rhodes Show Forum. Randi Rhodes is a liberal talk show host on Air America. I joined because there seemed to be a fair amount of political discussion going on.
Membership requirements are different for each community. In the MySpace community your account is generated immediately and you can start editing your page and your blog right away. I also had to join the sub-community of Buffalo Activists, and was accepted immediately, without peer review. However I found out that I couldn’t make any posts untill I had been a member for 7 days. It seems that they don’t want Newbees fumbeling around the forums bringing down conversations before they have explored the community, and that they want to avoid spammers. From roaming around the community I have noticed that the number of friends and comments in one’s profile represents a sort of status symbol. So to be accepted you need to do more than just participate in the forums, you should be developing little personal connections through the space. Indeed the forums seem to be an accessory rather than the focus, this and other aspects lead me to percieve this community as a sort of glorified dating service.
The Randi Rhodes Forum revolves around the discussion board, the profile page is minimal you can add one picture and a couple parigraphs of info and that’s it. My account had to be approved before I could do anything besides browse the messages. After being approved newbies are on “probation” which means their first 10 posts are closely minitored for any violations of the rules. Status on this group is denoted right below one’s icon in every post, the range is from “newbie” to “fancy pants elitist member”. In order to move up in rank you must post more frequently.
I can identify many of the roles mentioned, some polinator commented about a similar discussion in another thread, one Core Participant with a Sparticus icon composed about 40% of the posts in one forum that I was following. I also noticed a greeter in a forum on the Randi Rhodes site welcoming and encouraging a Newbie, and received my very own greeting on MySpace from some guy named Tom (probably hired, maybe fake) who wanted to be my friend.
So far I am just a Newbie and a Lurker, I’ve just started posting on both forums, and haven’t been involved in any important exchanges. I anticipate becoming more active, maybe not quite a core participant but active and engaged in the conversations that I join.

State of the Union

2005-02-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

This State of the Union address was a waste of time. It was like a long campaign commercial, filled with the usual vague, feel good rhetoric. In past years I would scream out the truth contradicting each of his lies, but this year I just sat there thinking actions speak louder than words. He said he’s going to raise Pell Grants, and aid to veterans, ok, I’ll believe it when I see it since he’s been cutting both for the past 4 years.
Here’s an article that provided me with a refreshing perspective after listening to Bush’s performance.
Article

The Bush administration tonight demagogically postures as the great liberator. This is the pose assumed by all aggressors in modern history on the "home front."

Iraq Elections

2005-01-31T10:24:00.000-08:00

I have many mixed feelings on this election. It is difficult to get ones mind around the situation after having been bombarded by the media coverage. You have to pry your brain away from the superficial frame that measures whether it has gone good or bad by the amount of violence and the number of people actually voting. My first impulse was to think “Iraqis are participating in a democratic process, that’s good right, I mean who could argue with that? I hope that everything turns out well because the Iraqis have certainly dealt with enough trouble. Bush is using it to make himself look good but he does that with everything.”

It’s difficult to even come up with a critical question to ask after watching the events unfold in the popular media. This is why one must look for alternative sources of information, at the very least it snaps your brain away long enough to start coming up with a more complex understanding of the situation. It’s not always this difficult to see world affairs through a critical lens, but I had a hard time coming to grips with the Iraqi election.

I had to backup and think, what are we trying to achieve, and what are the Iraqis trying to achieve. Really the beliefs of the Iraqis are the most important, we can say we’re spreading democracy till we’re blue in the face, but Iraqis determine what actually happens. So I went looking for an Iraqi perspective. Robert Fisk is covering the story for the UK Independent, he was interviewed by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! and he made some interesting observations.

One is that the Sunni Muslim minority that had been in power for a long time barely participated. They make up about 20% of the population, they have the most to lose, and they’re the main force behind the insurgency, but they didn’t vote. So the insurgents didn’t really give democracy a chance to solve their problems. If they aren’t using peaceful means like voting probably they won’t start reducing attacks any time soon.

The second thing that really struck me was the aims of those who did vote. Below is a paraphrase of what Fisk said about the Shiites who were voting.

“The Shiites were not voting for democracy, although they’d very much like to have it and believe in it, many of them expressed their views very forthrightly inside the polling station, 'we’re coming to vote because Al Sistani told us too, because we weren’t allowed to do so before, and because we want the Americans to leave.' Now it’s all very well for the American media to say that they came to vote for democracy, they probably did, but they also came because they think and believe and are convinced of the fact that by voting they will have a free country without an occupation force.”

That’s the key to this whole situation, the success of this election should be judged by whether or not it leads immediately to a change in the lives of everyday people in Iraq. The people of Iraq want the Americans to leave, the Shiites have decided to try peaceful means and vote just like we told them to. They expect things to change, and they expect the occupation to end, and America has less time to fulfill that demand than we would hope. If they see no change and they begin to feel betrayed, what will happen then? JFK explained it best when he said "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

If America does not take this election seriously, and if we do not actively show those in Iraq that peaceful means of change are effective, then this election will go very badly, because more groups will join in the violence. Bush is using this election as a prop to show the American people that we are making progress in Iraq, it is not difficult to convince the American people because we experience things from a safe distance through popular media channels, the difficult task is to show Iraqis. I hope that this is a milestone for Iraq, it can be the point at which peaceful means of change are finally taken seriously.

# # #

1st topic for Virtual Communities

2005-01-29T17:44:00.000-08:00

An online community provides a way for people to interact by remote. Unlike the telephone where only a few people can communicate at a time, and where you are restricted to the using and sharing of sounds, an online community allows many kinds of communication and interaction. One can share sound, text and video, and also use these mediums to communicate with others in the community.

The way I understand an online community it can include anything from discussion boards, to file sharing networks, to open listservs where all members can add their comments. The key ingredient of an online community is conversation and conscious interaction. Under this definition I have been a member of a few online communities, most of them are listservs, one was based around a discussion board and another was a file-sharing community. However I would consider the discussion board based community to be the best example of an online community. This community was called The Fredonia Underground it was created by a Fredonia student, and membership was restricted to those with a Fredonia based e-mail address, not including teachers. It had many features including the discussion board, a place to post upcoming events on the home page, and a database where students could record their opinions of teachers and others could look them up by the teachers department and name. Members could also create profiles including a few pictures, a list of their friends on the Underground and some personal information including their class standing and major etc. part of the fun of the community was that it was attached to the actual Fredonia community, you could learn something about the people you saw on campus by using the Fredonia Underground website, but you also met people you may not have seen through discussing your shared interests on the discussion board.

Through my experiences with this community I could relate to some of the things Rheingold mentioned. At some point someone posted a thread on the discussion board called “Underground Meetup” in which they suggested getting together in person. The plans were worked out and when the gathering happened there was about 25-30 people in attendance. I only stopped by for about 10 minutes but I can imagine that some deeper understandings and friendships grew out of that meeting that may have developed similar to those Rheingold mentioned with his parenting group. Also at one point a student on campus was killed in a car accident, his girlfriend was an active member of the Underground and she shared her story, and received the comfort of many in the community.

I can also relate to his being addicted to the community. If you are participating in a very interesting conversation you find yourself checking for activity on the site frequently. And there is a feature where you can see who’s online and how long they have been on, some would be online and active for hours at a time, personally I never became quite that interested.

I am comfortable being a member of an online community, though not sure how much of myself I’d like to make available for the world. Some people I know such as my younger cousin, have Live Journal accounts that they update every day, and in their entries they pour out all of their experiences and what they are feeling. I would not be comfortable putting so much of myself on display. However as in my experience with the Underground as I get to know the community better I become more willing to post my more controversial opinions. But the community was based around the Discussion board, it was not really a place like a Live Journal or a Blog where one could go into elaborate detail about their daily lives. But I enjoy online communities and I think they provide a good way for people to communicate with each other.

My Outer Harbor Development Article

2005-01-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

Outer Harbor Development is Exciting, but Plans Fall Short

Refferances

NFTA’s RFQ to Solicit Developers
City Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan
Outer Harbor Development NFTA Site
Governor Article on Outer Harbor Project
NFTA Article at release of RFQ
Article on Release of the RFQ
FBNR Plan
Buffalo Audubon’s comments
FBNR Letter of Concern
ERIE County Parks System Master Plan
NFTA Outer Harbor Projects

Links

City Waterfront Resource
BuffaloWaterfront.com
Friends of the Buffalo Niagara Rivers

by: David Coffee

Almost anybody familiar with Buffalo will agree that utilizing the waterfront is one of the most important tasks facing our city. Buffalo was born because of this unique waterfront, and our future will certainly be shaped by developments there.

Currently the NFTA and the city of Buffalo are working on plans for developing 120 acres of the Outer Harbor. Obviously such an enormous project must be undertaken very carefully, and the interests of the public must be seriously considered, however this is not what is happening today.

It must be noted that the effort to redevelop Buffalo’s waterfront has been proceeding rather well, and until now the project certainly hasn’t been rushed. In 2002 the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation finished its long awaited assessment of the Outer Harbor site, which opened the property to development.

From 2002 the process has proceeded cautiously and responsibly. Time was taken to conduct a Market Study, a public conference was held, projects were started throughout the waterfront, and then a formal Request For Qualifications was composed and released for potential Outer Harbor developers.

However once the developers submitted their proposals to the NFTA they were rushed by the public in the height of this Holiday season. On Saturday December 11 the proposals were released at a public meeting, the only public discussion of the proposals to date. Comments were accepted until January 10, and a week later the frontrunner of the three development teams was announced. The entire process lasted little over a month.

So what’s the hurry? We know that projects in the past have been delayed so long that they end up failing, and nobody wants to see that happen here, but this is the drafting of the final plan, this is where we decide what is actually going to happen on the ground. If anything this is the step that should be conducted most thoroughly.

Our public officials seem very eager get the developers onboard. They may have gotten a little worried about the project when only four plans were submitted for formal review, one of which dropped out early.

They also seem unconcerned that many aspects of the plans submitted conflict with the original goals of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan.

Another problem is that all proposals involve digging new canals through the contaminated brownfield site. Canals certainly were not recommended by the DEC, which stressed keeping the site isolated from the water table, avoiding inhalation of the soil, and even said that basements would not be possible for structures on the site.

There is also little attention paid to the fact that the property is on the great lakes. Aside from the new canals and boat slips that will end up competing with the Small Boat Harbor, the water around the site serves mostly to elevate the property value.

Looking on the bright side, the favored Lakefront Development Team is definitely the best choice. Though their plan must be redesigned it demonstrates that they understand many things about Buffalo.

They have included a large outdoor amphitheatre, evidently understanding that Buffalo loves music, art and festivals. There is also a convention center on their site, though this is not a good place for a new convention center it indicates that they were thinking about Buffalo’s unique needs in their design. Their plan is also the only one to include a public beach, arguably the only element of any of the proposals that cannot be simply relocated to another part of the city.

We’ve found a good developer, but we are still searching for a good design. In that search it would be wise to pay attention to the outline provided by The Friends of the Buffalo Niagara Rivers, it’s not a proposal but an outline that is vague enough to allow the developer some creativity but specific enough to keep the project within the limits of the region’s previously stated and thoughtfully researched goals.

If the Lakefront Development Team abandoned some of the unnecessary gimmicks in its plan like the amusement park and sports complex which will only distract from similar attractions in the area, and the convention center which would be better put by HSBC Arena. And if they abandoned the idea of digging canals in exchange for clustering dense development around the existing canals at either end of the site, then we would have a good actionable plan. A hybrid plan, from the Lakefront Development Team and FBNR.

# # #

News From Inside Iraq

2005-01-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

It is difficult to get an accurate picture of what is happening in Iraq. Most of the news that comes out of that country is censored by our military, the occupiers. Every time you see a picture from Iraq in the news you should remember that some government official looked at that photo and decided it could be shown to America, the same goes for the statements and news stories of embedded journalists operating inside the country.
Uncensored news from Iraq is a raritie and a treasure, so I’m sharing what I’ve found. Dahr Jamail is one of the only independent reporters inside Iraq, he publishes a weblog that is updated daily.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/

other sources can be found here

http://www.fredonia.edu/sa/campusgreens/iniraq.html

Protest updates

2005-01-20T19:33:00.000-08:00

I think I'm going to like this Blog idea, it's a lot easier to update than a regular website.
I've been browsing the news and I figured I'd post some of what I'd found on today's protests.

for on the street updates go to Indymedia, this page is being updated consistently
Indymedia

Here's a decent article
Chicago Sun Times

and a bunch of Pictures from Yahoo News
Yahoo Pics

"Michael Lauer, a Capitol Police spokesman, said police made five arrests during Bush's address." Congratulations to Code Pink and others who made it in.

Shiny and new

2005-01-20T13:41:00.000-08:00

What a young blog we have. Just waiting for the excitement to begin!

run with it

Limbaugh is in Charge

State of Denial: Two months before 9/11, Rice gave the 'brush-off' to 'impending terrorist attack' warning

Rushing Off a Cliff

Rushing Off a Cliff

D.C. corruption eruption

U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel

Ask an Iraqi War Veteran Who Supports the Troops

CA-04: Ask an Iraqi War Veteran Who Supports the Troops? Certainly Not Doolittle.

by Charlie Brown for CongressTue Sep 05, 2006 at 12:49:43 PM PDT

Food for Thought

Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature

Losing a War for Our Ignorance

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

Violence soaring despite growing number of Iraqi forces

Another Mission ‘Accomplished’

Explosions in the World Trade Center on 911

Gnarls Barkley

Sly and the Family Stone

A Perfect Storm Descends on the Nation's Capital

A Perfect Storm Descends on the Nation's Capital

Drenching Rains, a Fallen Elm, a Supreme Court Decision and President's Words on Global Warming

By BILL BLAKEMORE

Flag-waving for political gain

Seneca plan for casino aims locally

Hidden costs of gambling

Casino promises - still waiting : Buffalo News Article

NY Times Editorial - "The Trust Gap"

State of the Union and the Democratic Response

Buffalo Lawsuit Challenges a Casino Off Indian Land

Lawsuit filed against Buffalo casino - From Business First

Lawsuit filed against Buffalo casino

Esmonde Explains the Casino

Bring Them Home: Murtha's Statment to Congress

Bring Them Home: Murtha's Statment to Congress

Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest

Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions

Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions

Buffalo News is part of the Problem

The Casino is not a Done Deal

The Casino is not a Done Deal

A Critical Look at the Race for Mayor

Buffalo Mayoral Race Article

Anti-Terror Strategy in Doubt on 9/11 Anniversary

Osama and Katrina

Waiting for a Leader

Waiting for a Leader

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

Life in the Bottom 80 Percent

Iraq heads toward Civil War

Eyewitness accounts of the London Blasts

Our new Apartment

Flickr is Fun?

British Iraq Memo

Community Concept Paper

Big Government vs. Small Government

Important Congressional Votes

Buffalo Webring

Message boards

Virtual Communities Essay

State of the Union part 2

2nd Topic for Virtual Communities

State of the Union

Iraq Elections

1st topic for Virtual Communities

My Outer Harbor Development Article

News From Inside Iraq

Protest updates

Shiny and new

by Charlie Brown for Congress
Tue Sep 05, 2006 at 12:49:43 PM PDT