He has gained further infamy from the recent reports that show that Senator Phil Gramm was largely responsible for leading the charge in dismantling the legislation that had been enacted post-Great Depression in order to avoid a repeat of the economic disaster that we are now seeing today.

But more recent investigations into the activities of the Swiss owned UBS Bank which received bailout funding during the Bush Administration’s distribution of funds under Treasury Secretary Paulsen, are showing an even darker side to Phil Gramm’s activities.

Phil Gramm is vice-president of a US division of UBS, and his expertise has long been known to be as an advisor to tax cheats on how to hide their money in order to evade taxes. But his activities had been demonstrated to have compromised National Security efforts in order to hide his clients money, and were made public by investigative journalists Tim Weiner and David Cay Johnston shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001. “A NATION CHALLENGED: THE PAPER TRAIL; Roadblocks Cited In Efforts to Trace Bin Laden’s Money”

A six-year struggle to uncover Osama bin Laden’s financial network failed because American officials did not skillfully use the legal tools they had, did not realize they needed stronger weapons, and faced resistance at home and abroad, officials involved in the effort say.

Federal officials say they have not persuaded foreign banks to open their books to investigators and that in this country, a law that would have allowed the United States to penalize foreign banks that did not cooperate was blocked last year (2000), by a single United States senator.

That single senator was Phil Gramm, then a member of the Senate Banking Committee. Given that al Qaeda could not have launched an operation on the scale of the World Trade Center attacks deprived of finances, tracking down and putting a stop to money laundering by terrorist organizations should have been and should be today a priority in any national security effort. Efforts to put the screws on foreign banks prior to 2001 met with resistance in the Bush White House, but it quickly reversed course after the attacks. Phil Gramm, though single-handedly responsible for blocking the bill, felt no such inkling.

“I was right then and I am right now” in opposing the bill, Mr. Gramm said yesterday…”The way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them.”

That anyone still believes that is a reliable and practically-feasible method is incredible, but to suggest using force to the exclusion of all other tools is ludicrous.

“We could have starved the organization if we put our minds to it,” said Richard Palmer, who gained experience in money laundering as the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Moscow during the 1990′s. “The government has had the ability to track these accounts for some time.”

So instead of tracking the money of known terrorists, the Bush Administration focused their “efforts” on capturing and listening to all of the electronic communications of every American, without any significant results to show for it, in their “War on Terror”.

And recent investigations, disclosures and indictments of UBS executives for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government while managing cross-border bank business add to the list of UBS offenses against U.S. taxpayers who got bailout money from the Bush Administration, when the money was originally supposed to only go to U.S. banks.

On February 19, 2009, Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz and the UBS Bank took the unprecedented step of agreeing to reveal information on 250 tax cheats to the U.S. Government, and pay a $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution for conspiring to create sham accounts to hide from the U.S. Government the assets of U.S. clients.

Approximately 17,000 American clients concealed their UBS accounts from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. tax-collection agency, hiding assets of roughly $20 billion in total, U.S. officials said.

The New York Times reported that UBS ultimately may disclose the identities of just a few hundred customers. (An update on the story is saying that the suit is asking for information on as many as 52,000 of UBS’s U.S. clients.)

According to U.S. officials, when an acquisition in 2000 of a U.S. company brought UBS a host of new American clients, the bank set about to evade new reporting requirements for those clients. To do so, UBS executives helped U.S. taxpayers open new accounts in the names of sham entities.

Prosecutors contend that UBS executives used encrypted software and other counter-surveillance techniques to prevent anyone from detecting that they were actively marketing such Swiss bank secrecy, and tax evasion, to American taxpayers.

The clients, in turn, filed false tax returns that omitted the income they earned in their Swiss accounts, according to the court papers.

Federal officials said they had pulled aside a veil of secrecy that hid a corrupt international banking practice.

“This was not a mere compliance oversight, but rather a knowing crime motivated by greed and disrespect for the law,” said Alexander Acosta, U.S. attorney for southern Florida.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman warned U.S. taxpayers hiding money overseas that it was time to come clean with the agency.

“People who have hidden unreported income offshore need to get right with their government. They should come forward and take advantage of our voluntary disclosure process,” Shulman said.

Democratic Sen. Carl Levin has estimated that abusive tax shelters and hidden offshore accounts cost the U.S. government nearly $100 billion a year in lost tax revenue.

Full story on the UBS turnover of client records to U.S. authorities here.

$100 billion in lost tax revenues every year from tax cheats would put a significant dent in the Federal Deficit, particularly if it had been paid into the Treasury for however many years it had been withheld. And this is probably much less than the actual revenues lost, given the over $1 Trillion hidden in the Royal Bank of Lichtenstein alone, by 1400 American tax cheats.

Given the fact that the Bush Administration gave these guys Trillions of dollars in tax cuts, you might have thought that it would have been enough. Apparently, you would have been wrong. But at least we now know where all that “trickle down” money “trickle went”.

Perhaps putting these guys in jail and seizing the money that they hid might help to balance the budget deficit that they helped to create.

With all the noise that Republicans had made about Democratic candidates tax problems’ (for appointed positions in Obama’s cabinet), they should be screaming at the top of their lungs about these tax cheats. These guys make the Democrats look like altar boys (in more ways than one, if you think about it). The money Democrats owed wouldn’t even qualify as being worth the lint in Republican assisted tax cheats’ pockets.

But I would ask each of these organizations to consider all the people for whom we have worked to get President-elect Barack Obama elected.

Millions are out of work, millions have lost their homes. We are currently in an economic crisis which is the worst since the Great Depression, which lasted for ten years, from 1929 to 1939.

I would encourage all of you to consider doing a food drive of non-perishable items to coincide with your celebrations, so that we can show everyone that we work differently than Republicans do, and that we truly have the people as our priority.

We have an opportunity to celebrate our success, but we also have an obligation to help those who have not yet benefited from this change in Administration, which has been a long time in coming, yet who gave all they could to help make this possible.

Most of the food pantries throughout the country are hurting, with donations down, and some of their donors are now in line asking for assistance.

Your help in making this change in administration a celebration that we can all enjoy is greatly appreciated.

Here are some local organizations which can use your help.

Food Pantry of Waukesha County
215 W. North Street
Waukesha, WI 53188
Tel: 262.542.5300 | Fax: 262.542.4177 | E-mail: WaukeshaPantry@tds.net

Hunger Task Force
201 S. Hawley Court
Milwaukee, WI 53214
Phone: (414) 777-0483
Fax: (414) 777-0480
Open Hours: Normal business hours are 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.
http://www.hungertaskforce.org/contact_us/

Our National nightmare of the last eight years may not yet be over, but we’re off to a great start!!!

Bush, Cheney, McCain, Palin and the Republicans who have ruled or sought to rule with their “national mandates”, and “political capital” have been soundly rebuked.

For the first time since the 1950’s, we no longer have a Bush or a Dole elected or re-elected to national office in the United States.

If Republicans learn anything from this election, they should recognize that the old Lee Atwater/Karl Rove campaign tactics they’ve used for decades aren’t being believed anymore by the majority of the American people.

People who have been so abused by the politics of “agree with us, or be branded as unpatriotic”, will no longer stand for the abuses of power, or the abuses of arrogance.

People who have been denied their right to voice their opinions or vote for their candidates of choice, have now seen that their votes DO COUNT when they SHOW UP TO VOTE. They don’t have to give in to the lies, the intimidation and the techniques used throughout our country’s entire history to deny the masses their right to vote or to demand a redress of grievances from their government.

In spite of the reports coming in from around the country of Republican attempts to prevent people from voting, by threatening to arrest them for parking tickets, or arrest them if they had “also previously voted in the Primary elections”; in spite of them removing thousands of legally registered voters from the “official voter databases” without justification; or keeping millions of voters in line for hours because of insufficient poll workers signing in voters and providing them ballots to cast their votes, or not having enough ballots or having insufficient voting machines at polling stations to count the votes cast; in spite of touch screen voting machines that flipped Democratic votes to Republican candidates; we have just witnessed that when the voters turn out in large enough numbers, the strength of their numbers can, will and did prevent the theft of this election. Voter awareness of the REAL ISSUES was a victory for the entire country.

For those electors/voters who did suffer through these indignities, they need to vote out their local politicians and elections officials who allowed this to occur, and replace them with people who will protect their rights to a fair and honest election.

On behalf of the leadership of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District, I thank all of you who have taken the time and made the effort to raise your own awareness of the issues and volunteered to work hard in putting a new, thoughtful and responsible leadership in charge of our country at a time when our country most urgently needs it.

God bless all of you for your efforts, and God bless a United States of America that works for ALL OF US.

Now, don’t just sit back on your laurels, with this new victory, and expect things will just happen all on their own. The people to people networking that you have become part of, to move politicians and create change by being part of the change you want to see, is just the beginning of the personal empowerment that you have all seen and experienced first hand. Now use those networking and community organizing skills to create the necessary changes in the policies of our government and of our business leaders to unite this country and build it up, instead of allowing them to tear it apart and bankrupt it.

We have the opportunity now, to take this country in a new direction. We don’t need the approvals of those who have long ignored commonsense policies, or diplomatic negotiations, or the pleas of the “invisible majority”; nor should we just hope for the chance that they might someday “come around”.

They aren’t in charge anymore. We have new leadership. It is our time. We must not fail. And with the continued support and involvement of all those who supported President-elect Obama’s candidacy, by shaping, promoting and enacting his new policies, we will not fail.

Now let us all get to the real work in rebuilding our country.

Even though Republicans passed tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and provided tax breaks to multi-billion dollar corporations who ended up paying little or no taxes at all, yet benefit from the infrastructures that real American taxpayers actually pay for, they somehow don’t feel that they have to pay their fair share themselves, and are asking for even more tax breaks, which McCain has promised to provide to them if he is elected President.

Even though the bottom 90% of American taxpayers from 1970 to 2000 ended up losing income based on pre-tax 2000 dollars, the top 10% of American taxpayers increased their income from about 30% to 558.3%.  It’s gotten worse during the Dubya administration, with the 400 richest Americans increasing their wealth by $670 BILLION.  Yes, that is not a typo.  That is BILLION with a B.  $670 Billion divided up amongst the 400 richest Americans.  Maybe now you understand why YOU aren’t getting any part of it.

Some of the largest corporations in the world don’t pay any taxes to do business in the United States and have moved their headquarters off-shore so that they can avoid American taxes in the future as well.

Halliburton is an example of that.  An American corporation, which is moving its headquarters to Dubai, has been one which has profited the most from the war in Iraq, because of its no-bid contracts, and its close association with Vice-President Cheney, (Halliburton’s former CEO, before becoming Co-President with Bush), Cheney continues to receive long term payments from Halliburton, from past services.  (At least that’s what we’re told.)  Like many executives who earn millions of dollars in payments in a short period of time, in order to avoid paying taxes on those earnings, he delayed receipt of those earnings by taking only a small portion every year over a period of many years, so that he would pay smaller amounts in taxes because he would pay less on smaller amounts received each year and he could use the exemptions he accumulated in the later years to apply to the taxes that he owed from the earlier income.

Because wealthy executives are able to use these tax-dodge schemes to avoid paying their share of taxes, the burden of paying those taxes is shifted to the poor and middle class.  Since the poor don’t have the money to pay for the taxes that are owed by the rich and the corporations, the burden falls on the middle class to pay the share that corporations used to pay.  The portion of Corporate profits that go to federal income taxes dropped from 26 cents of each dollar in 1993 to 22 cents in 1998, even though the official corporate income tax remained unchanged at 35%.  The super-rich used to pay anywhere from 60-90% tax rates, now they pay a maximum of 36%. Those numbers have been reduced even further under Bush.  The balance is now being paid for by the middle class.

But that isn’t the whole story.  An average of 60% of the investments that the wealthy hold, are non-taxable investments, which means that they are only being taxed on an average of 40% of their total earnings.  (That is, of the total income that they have voluntarily disclosed to the IRS.  Since much of their income is buried in holdings that are camouflaged in layers of shell corporations to hide their identities, a great deal of their income is never disclosed at all, and taxes are never paid on those earnings.)

Keep in mind that the richest 15% of Americans control almost all of the assets in America.  The richest 1% of Americans, the top 1.3 million or so households own almost half of all of the stocks, bonds, cash and other financial assets in the country.

According to the most recent reports from the GAO, 66.7% of all U.S. Corporations pay ZERO in income taxes, even though many of them earn millions and even billions of dollars in revenues every year. 

Here’s the AP story:

 August 13, 2008 (AP)Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998-2005, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office.  About 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. also avoided corporate taxes during the same period.  Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales.  More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies (66.7%) paid no income tax.  About 25% of large U.S. corporations — those with at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts — did not pay corporate taxes.  The GAO analyzed data from the IRS, examining samples of corporate returns from 1998-2005.  For 2005, it examined 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business inside the United States.  Tax figures since 2006 were not examined.

Here’s the GAO report:  http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08957.pdf

A similar report from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue showed the same thing.  66.7% of corporations in Wisconsin paid ZERO in income taxes, again, even though some of them earn billions of dollars every year. (Data from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue reported by the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future www.wisconsinsfuture.org .)

Now you know why YOU have to pay more in taxes.

So the next time you think about falling for the same lies from Republicans about how they are going to cut your taxes, just remember how it is that they manage to avoid taxes and shift them from themselves to you in the first place.

John McCain says that many Americans don’t pay any taxes at all.  He should know, his top economic advisor, former Senator Phil Gramm has been setting up offshore bank accounts for his millionaire/billionaire buddies so that they can hide their assets and not pay U.S. Taxes.

And in July of this year, Brian Ross of ABC News reported that a computer technician with The Liechtenstein bank, LGT, (owned by the tiny country's ruling family led by Prince Hans-Adam II), sold 3 CDs full of names of millionaires who have been hiding their assets in secret accounts with the bank to 12 countries including Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States.  http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5378080&page=1 

Is this why Republican Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner insists on traveling to Liechtenstein every year?

A six month investigation (as of July 17^th of this year) by Congress has exposed 1400 tax cheats who have hidden $1.5 TRILLION in offshore banks.

Could it be that the reason that the current banking collapse is because they can’t show where their money went?

Could it be that the money that was “lost” was transferred to foreign banks in these tax evasion schemes?

A former UBS private banker, Bradley Birkenfeld, has agreed to a plea deal and is reported to be cooperating with US authorities in bring charges against American citizens on tax evasion charges.  That’s the UBS that as of March of this year, had written down more than $18 Billion in mortgage crisis losses.

On October 7, 2002, it was announced that former Senator Phil Gramm, joined UBS as their Vice Chairman.  Yes, THAT Phil Gramm, the John McCain top economic policy advisor, and according to some reports, McCain’s pick to be the next Treasury Secretary of the United States.  What was that again about being a “Maverick” and a “straight talker” who was going to “reform Washington”?

Bush took what was $3.5 Trillion in surplus holdings when he took office and turned that into a $12.1 Trillion deficit for our national debt.  That is a $15.6 TRILLION flush down the toilet in only eight short years.  And that isn’t even including the recent $1 Trillion bank bailout proposals (Taking into account the $315 Billion which has already been spent in the bailouts for Bear Stearns – $30 Billion, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -$200 Billion, and AIG – $85 Billion.)  But the Federal Budget numbers don’t include the funds that are voted on in Congress for Supplemental Funding measures, like all of the money that goes towards funding the War in Iraq.  And the only reason that your taxes aren’t already higher now, is because Bush isn’t paying for the debt that he is responsible for creating.  He is just putting off paying for it so that the debt is so high that you will never be able to pay off the debt in your lifetime, or your children’s or your grandchildren’s.  That means that the interest that you end up paying on the debt is more than the debt accumulated in the first place, just like you pay for your house and your car and your credit cards, when you get in over your head and when the interest rates are so high, and you get behind in your payments, just as was intended to keep you from ever paying off the debt.

The $750 Billion dollars already approved for funding the War in Iraq doesn’t come close to paying for all of the future costs to rebuild the military or pay for the health care costs of the returning injured vets, which when factored in, come closer to totaling $3 Trillion.

So, no matter who the next President of the United States is, SOMEBODY’S taxes will be going up to pay for this debacle.  The difference between the candidates, is whether it will be the poor and middle class (under McCain’s proposals), or the wealthy (under Obama’s proposals) who get stuck with paying the bill.

Republicans are refusing to acknowledge that they ever had anything do to with it, and running from Bush as fast as they can, but they VOTED IN LOCKSTEP FOR HIS POLICIES.

Maybe that is why they keep telling people “not to play the blame game”.  They always tell you that WHEN THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MESS.

For more information on how the Super Rich have rigged the tax system to benefit while cheating everyone else, read “Perfectly Legal” A New York Times Best Seller by Pulitzer Prize – Winning Reporter David Cay Johnston.  Winner of the Ire Medal, Best Investigative Book of the Year.

Republicans have been in power for a greater percentage of the time (in Congress and in the White House) than Democrats over the past 30 years.

Since 1969 we have seen five Republican Presidents over 28 years and only two Democratic Presidents for 12 years.

We have seen Republican control of Congress for 12 of the last 14 years, and even with a small majority over the last two years in Congress by Democrats, Republicans have still used seven filibusters on bipartisan bills which had wide bipartisan support, in order to prevent action being taken on the mortgage crisis.

During that period of time, because of the delays, 100,000 homeowners have been foreclosed on because Republicans refused to take action.

And if you want to see what political Party policies have been responsible for recessions and depressions over the last eighty years, here’s the list:

Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), and Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), both Republicans - The Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression lasting 43 months.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) Democrat – 2 Recessions, 1937-13 months (getting out of the Great Depression which he didn’t create), 1945 – 8 months (as a result of WWII)

Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) Democrat – Recession of (1948-1949) 11 months

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961) Republican – Recession (1957-1958) 8 months, (1960-1961) 10 months

Richard Nixon (1969-1974) Republican – Recession (1969-1970) 11 months

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) Republican – Recession (1981-1982) 16 months, Recession (1982-1983) caused by tight monetary policy

George H.W. Bush (1989-1993) Republican – Recession (1990-1992) (From the collapse of the junk bond market and credit crunch). Bush 1 also used a Taxpayer bailout to pay for the Savings and Loan Collapse, which cost taxpayers $1.4 Trillion (the legislation which was signed at the time, was only supposed to cost taxpayers $600 Billion).


George W. Bush (2001-Present) Republican Recession (2001-2003). Given the mortgage bust and the repeated drops in the stock market, most people would consider us to be in a prolonged Recession today as well. (2007-2008) With the collapse of the residential housing and mortgage market; and the recent collapse of the insurance giant AIG, one of the world’s largest insurers; and the collapse of investment bankers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, and banks across the country with the Bush Administration’s request for a $700 Billion bailout to be paid for by the U.S. TAXPAYERS ($2,200 for every man, woman and child – about $9,000 for a family of four), I don’t think that any of the Republican talking heads can continue to be in public denial on the state of the economy.

Allan Greenspan says that this is the worst economic crisis in a century. Within the last week, we have seen the stock market take the biggest hits on market value since the Great Depression.

Tally:

7 Republican Presidents (out of 8 Republicans who were elected in this time period), 11 Recessions/Depressions ( Hoover’s is counted separately even though it is an extension of Coolidge’s, because it is a different administration) – 15 years out of 43 years Recession or Depression ON THEIR WATCH

2 Democratic Presidents (out of 6 Democrats who were elected in this time period), 3 Recessions/Depression (Roosevelt’s Depression is an extension of Coolidge’s but is still counted separately since it is a different administration) – 3 years out of 20 years Recession or Depression on their watch

There is a HUGE difference in the way Republicans and Democrats handle the economy with their policies, and the results speak for themselves.

And let’s not forget that William Jefferson Clinton – Democrat, had the best economic record of any President, adding 23 million new jobs and balancing the budget with a projected federal surplus of over 5 Trillion dollars.

On the other hand, on the Republican side, in eight short years, George W. Bush has reversed that and put us into a 10 Trillion dollar deficit, with the largest increase in Government, the largest federal budget deficits in history, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

All of the Republican economic policies have been exactly the same for each Republican President. Tax cuts for the rich, while putting more of the burden on the middle class. They just give it different names. McCain promises more of the same.

Which Party has the better track record?

We need solutions, not excuses, and certainly not more of the same from McCain.

While the big investment houses have been promoting products to push their value up on paper, there really hasn’t been any real value there to support it. Now when Wall Street is tanking, the Bush Administration expects the middle class to bail out the people who have been stealing from average Americans with the deregulations that the Republicans provided them to make it all possible.

This is just like the Savings and Loan scams during the FIRST Bush Administration. That cost us taxpayers $1.4 Trillion dollars.

And, remember when miles and miles of suburban development was taking place in the middle of “Nowhere”, Texas and the developers just sold the properties back and forth between one another to jack up the value on paper, and the government ended up paying for that scam? The homes were built, but no individuals actually ever lived there, (and couldn’t because the “new homes” were falling apart!) The taxpayers ended up bailing out the government housing development branch, for billions of dollars, with the swoop of President George H.W. Bush’s pen.

Senator Bernie Sanders I – Vermont was on the floor of the Senate today saying that he did NOT support the bailout, and specifically cited the fact that the 400 richest people in America increased their wealth by $670 BILLION during the Bush Administration’s terms in office. He repeated that so that no one would miss the point he was making.

I’ll repeat it so that no one misses it by reading it here either.

The top 400 richest PEOPLE in America increased their wealth by $670 BILLION during George W. Bush’s terms in office. 400 people – $670 BILLION richer.

Remember, these are the people he calls his “base”. No poor people need apply.

Note that Bush’s bailout is for $700 BILLION. Hmmmmm. there wouldn’t be any connection between these two numbers now would there? Somebody has to pay the final price tag in order for the Ponzi Scheme to work, remember? So, in order for someone to collect on the “value” of the investments, someone has to either purchase those investments at full value (which no one is willing to do these days), or the government has to force the taxpayers to “bail” them out. So, if we the taxpayers pay this $700 BILLION, just where is this money going? I can guarantee that none of the money is going to go to the TAXPAYERS who are bailing these guys out. But it will cost every man, woman and child about $2,200, or the average family of four almost $9,000.

Boy, this trickle down economics of supporting the wealthy with their multi-TRILLION dollar tax cuts really worked out well for the working stiff, didn’t it?

Oh, that’s right, the Billionaires got the tax cuts AND the bailouts, and the working stiffs got…STIFFED!

Now, wouldn’t the rich Republicans call any kind of bailout to the poor or the middle class…like universal healthcare, SOCIALISM?

Isn’t this SOCIALIZED WELFARE for the BILLIONAIRES who gambled and lost on Wall Street? (They gambled your money and lost it, and now they want you to pay for their gambling. Don’t NORMAL people get thrown into jail for this?)

So if this SOCIALIZED BAILOUT for the wealthiest, who have been taking huge bonuses and compensation during the Bush presidency, is okay, then why isn’t it fair for THEM to be paying their fair share of TAXES, and taking responsibility for their own screw-ups, instead of sticking it to the middle class instead?


And since the richest 400 people in America INCREASED their wealth by $670 BILLION because of this fraud, shouldn’t they have to pay it BACK?

Here’s an idea. Make the richest 400 people in America pay for this bailout and leave the poor and middle class alone. Those who benefited from this fraud should be forced to pay for their crimes – NOT benefit from them AGAIN.

And why is it that Democrats should have to hurry up and agree to this quickly thrown together three page plan that gives the Treasury Secretary total control over $700 Billion with no need for any sign off from Congress?

What? No constraints, no accountability and no oversight? And his actions wouldn’t be reviewable by any court of law or oversight committee. Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?

How does that saying go? “The Lack of Planning on Your Part Does Not Constitute an Emergency On My Part!”

Only a few months ago, Secretary Paulsen said that our economy was “marvelous”. Now he says we are “days away from a total meltdown”.

On July 31, President Bush said our economy was “strong”.

And on the morning of September 15, John McCain said our economy was “fundamentally strong”, just before the market lost 504.4 points or $700 Billion dollars in the largest one day drop in value since the Great Depression.

John McCain suddenly made an about face and called it an “economic crisis” later that afternoon. OK, so he did say that economics wasn’t his strongest subject, but don’t you think that a little oversight and reports from experts would have provided him with a better feel for where the economy really was? Except that for 26 years he hasn’t wanted any oversight or reports from experts. So, now McCain thinks we should have a regulatory agency overseeing the financial markets, to avoid this type of disaster, even though he’s called himself “fundamentally a deregulator” and voted against regulatory controls for the last 26 years. And of course, when John McCain was head of the Senate Commerce Committee, he didn’t want regulations then either. (And he wants to deregulate your Healthcare too!)

This crisis didn’t happen overnight. It took years for this to develop. So, why didn’t Paulsen, Bush and McCain see this coming? Most average Americans saw it coming. Are Paulsen, Bush and McCain really that stupid? Or were they lying and covering up the scam all along?

And Rick Davis, McCain’s Campaign Manager, was paid $1.8 million over five years to run the lobbying organization (who all back McCain) to pressure Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to loosen up their regulatory practices. And it is clear that these “loosened up practices” made it possible for the con artists to scam billions of dollars out of our economy.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7012388183

And McCain’s top financial advisor, former Senator Phil Gramm, of “we are a nation of whiners” and “this is a mental recession” fame, was the guy who, in 1999, as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, through his Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, was responsible for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Great Depression era legislation which had regulations in place to prevent this type of meltdown from occurring in the first place.

Currently Gramm is Vice Chairman of UBS, the Swiss Bank that came up with the idea of “death bonds.” Worse, though, UBS is involved in a scam where they sold auction rate securities to American customers. Auction rate securities are supposed to be as safe as cash, but the way UBS did it, the fees garnished by their in-house investment bankers were intentionally higher than the return on the securities, ripping off their American customers. The Massachusetts Attorney General has already filed charges against UBS, and private brokers world-wide have dropped UBS stock. UBS is forecasted to lose 82.91% of its value in 2008. We are talking about the corporate bank where Gramm is Vice Chairman. Looking at his track record there and at the havoc he has wrought on the US economy through the Senate Banking Committee, it’s clear that either Gramm is a criminal or grossly incompetent.

This is the guy that McCain wants to make Secretary of the Treasury. With no constraints, accountability or oversight.

But I’m sure that Republicans will claim that their demand for bailouts is an entitlement (for BILLIONAIRES), and necessary for the economic security of our country.

Yeah, just like the Patriot Act was for our “freedoms” and the War in Iraq was for “weapons of mass destruction”.

For almost all of the major issues that he created his “Maverick” image from, he’s reversed himself on his previous positions today.

He was against the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy before he was for them.

He was against torture before he was for it (in order to get Gov. Mitt Romney’s endorsement.)

He was against extremist preachers who preached hate, until he sought their endorsements for their followers’ votes.

He was against offshore oil drilling until he got a $2 million donation from the oil companies.

He was against lobbyists until he needed them to run his campaign. http://www.campaignmoney.org/node/258444/print

Campaign Money Watch, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group, announced today the result of a new analysis of the fees Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) lobbyist bundlers, advisors and staff members have collected from domestic clients over the past decade.

The total? A staggering $930,949,819.

“The McCain campaign relies on big money lobbyists, and they’ll rely on him,” said David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch. “In the ‘you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours’ world of Washington, $931 million gets the special interests the best government money can buy. But just think of the payday these lobbyists might expect in a McCain Administration.”

Campaign Money Watch’s analysis of data provided by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (http://www.opensecrets.org [1]) also found that employees and Political Action Committees of these lobbyists’ clients have donated $11,750,051 to McCain’s campaigns, a fact that raises its own set of problems, Donnelly said.

For more information on the lobbyists that McCain has on his campaign staff click here: http://www.mccainslobbyists.com/

Here’s a Washington Post story on some of his top lobbyist advisors: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022101131_pf.html

FOX News attempted to whitewash McCain’s connections to lobbyists with tainted reputations claiming that the McCain campaign was issuing a new conflict of interest policy after McCain’s campaign was embarrassed by lobbyist staffers were connected with lobbying work that McCain has previously spoken out against http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/05/16/mccain-reevaluates-campaign-staff-hunts-for-ties-to-lobbyists/

“McCain adviser Craig Shirley was asked to leave the campaign following inquiries about his work with a “527″ group that sharply criticized the Democratic presidential candidates.

The 527s, named for the part of the tax code that regulates them, are independent special interest groups formed mainly to influence elections.

Shirley was advising McCain while his firm also was doing public relations work for the group Stop Her Now, according to the article. The Stop Her Now group initially targeted Hillary Clinton — in part through cartoons and animated features on its Web site — but has changed its message to “Stop Him Now,” going after Barack Obama as he’s taken the lead in the Democratic contest.

Shirley was ousted after two other high-profile McCain aides resigned their positions following reports that they were working for a firm that lobbied for the Burmese military junta in 2002.

One of the two was Doug Goodyear, the man picked by McCain’s campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention. A Newsweek story scrutinizing Goodyear and his firm DCI Group’s $348,000 contract with the junta also drew attention to DCI’s work with 527 groups. Goodyear then stepped down from his convention role “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”

Personally, I think that the reason that FOX News made such a big deal out of this story was to make it appear as if McCain was willing to cut strings with Craig Shirley, who had attacked Senator Hillary Clinton, in order to court the people who voted for her. If McCain gets elected, I suspect that he will hire Craig Shirley back in some capacity.

McCain has at least 115 lobbyists on his campaign staff, including ten who represent brutal dictators, human rights abusers and other unsavory foreign interests. Sign a petition here to tell him to fire his lobbyists NOW. http://firethelobbyists.com/

Here are more links for information on more of McCain’s lobbyists and the money men behind him:

http://blog.mccainslobbyists.com/?p=64
http://www.campaignmoney.org/mccaintech

McCain’s national finance co-chair, former Texas Rep. Thomas G. Loeffler, one of McCain’s key fundraisers, resigned when it became public that Loeffler’s lobbying shop “The Loeffler Group” represented European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., the parent company of plane manufacturer Airbus. EADS won a lucrative contract to provide air refueling tankers for the Air Force after McCain helped scuttle an earlier contract in 2004 that would have gone to a competitor, Boeing.Co.

More here: http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTA1MTk5NQ

Public Campaign Action Fund investigated and reported on a deal between German owned shipping company DHL and UPS that will transfer jobs 8,000 jobs from Ohio to Kentucky. Even though McCain has expressed concerns about anti-trust issues, McCain played an important role in allowing a foreign owned company to own DHL in the first place. But McCain wouldn’t join the Ohio delegation in investigating a possible anti-trust violation. Why would he? His top advisors recently earned more than $1 million from the companies involved to help make the deal that is under scrutiny today.

Three McCain staffers have lobbied on behalf of the companies involved, and one of them, John Green, has lobbied for both of the companies involved in the anti-trust issue.
• Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, and Christian Ferry, McCain’s e-campaign director, both lobbied for Deutsche Post, the company that bought DHL and Airborne in 2002 and 2003, between October 2003 and December 2005. During this time their firm, Davis-Manafort, billed $465,000 in fees.
• Davis and Ferry both also lobbied on behalf of Airborne in 2003, earning an additional $125,000 in fees. Their work involved lobbying the Senate to approve the DHL-Airborne merger, which it did. (5)
• John Green, McCain’s liaison to Congress, lobbied for Deutsche Post from June 2003 to April 2006, earning $600,000 in fees.
• Then, Green recently lobbied on behalf of UPS, earning $40,000 for lobbying work between August 2007 and March 2008.

More here: http://www.campaignmoney.org/mccaindhl

Do working-class Americans really believe that McCain is going to improve their futures with these types of policies?

Didn’t McCain say he is going to clean up Washington? Aren’t these lobbyists on his staff, the guys he claims he is going to protect us from?

So if you like a candidate who works to allow foreign owned companies to acquire U.S. companies, and lose American jobs, while failing to investigate anti-trust violations; who works to give foreign companies contracts with the U.S. government while preventing U.S. companies from getting those contracts, then John McCain is your man.

McCain was against the GI Bill before he took credit for its passage (even though he didn’t bother to show up to vote for it). And he was a straight talker (or claimed to be), before he turned to sleaze and lies.

Even Karl Rove is saying that McCain’s commercials are lies – “McCain went too far”…“attributing things to Obama that are beyond the truth test”. He must have “jumped the shark” in order to get a comment like that from Rove.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/14/campaign.wrap/index.html
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/09/14/karl-rove-says-mccain-went-too-far/

McCain is proving that he would rather lose his integrity than lose an election – at the expense of his country.

More on McCain:

The Real McCain 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

Less Jobs More Wars http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-T2iGkLJY

John McCain debates John McCain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI

McCain’s Spiritual Guide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZbIGJrDkg

Why Won’t McCain Sign the GI Bill? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK_9sI7hzAc

McCain – running the sleaziest ads ever…selling out to the lobbyists…putting his ambition ahead of his country.

Allen Greenspan stated that this is the worst economic climate he’s seen.

I guess reality suddenly slapped McCain upside the head and he realized that he couldn’t continue to lie to the public. When everyone else can see that even Wall Street is tanking, and the rich are starting to lose their shirts, then and only then, does McCain admit that the economy ISN’T “fundamentally strong”. Heck, even Bush got called out for calling our economy “fundamentally strong”, quite some time ago. Why is it that the media has been letting McCain get away with this lie for so long?

It was financial deregulation and banks investing in bad mortgages that Bush had pushed for in his “ownership society” idea, which caused people to buy property with no money down and shaky employment. It was Allen Greenspan who cut interest rates to allow people to get loans that they weren’t qualified to get. And it is John McCain, who calls himself “the biggest free marketer out there”, and claims that he is “fundamentally a deregulator”, who has continually worked to eliminate any regulations which could have prevented the current crisis from occurring in the first place. It was John McCain’s top economic advisor, Senator Phil Graham, who in 1999 got rid of the Great Depression era regulations that allowed this crisis to occur.

Now with unemployment rising, and a million homes being foreclosed this year, (with a million more projected to be foreclosed on next year), banks have to be bailed out by the government – by YOU the taxpayers – just like what happened during the previous Bush Administration, when all of the Savings and Loans went under at an initial cost of over $600 Billion to the taxpayers, which later ballooned to over $1.4 TRILLION. That was one quarter of the country’s deficit at the time. We are still paying for that debacle.

(Two of President George H.W. Bush’s sons, Jeb and Neil, were officers in Savings and Loans that went under due to their mismanagement, and failed to repay millions of dollars in loans that they took, abusing their positions in the process, and relied on the U.S. Government, i.e. TAXPAYERS, to pay investors for their losses at pennies on the dollar, in a bailout signed by – dear old dad. (Jeb defaulted on a $4.56 Million from the Broward Savings and Loan which he was an officer of. Neil became a Director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30, and the S&L went belly up three years later at a cost to taxpayers of $1.6 Billion.) http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm

The Savings and Loans went under because of new financial deregulations that went into place under the Reagan Administration in the early 1980’s that were supposed to increase their profitability while promoting home ownership. Sound familiar?)

More on the Bush S&L Debacle here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3330.htm
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/savings_and_loan_associations/index.html?query=BUSH,%20GEORGE&field=per&match=exact

Not only do you have to bail out the banks for their mismanagement, but your own property values are dropping because of the excessive number of homes on the market.

But it wasn’t only the Bushs that were involved in the S&L Debacle. John McCain had his own connections with the Keating Five. Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan failed at an eventual cost to taxpayers of $3.4 Billion, because of bad real estate deals, some of which John McCain’s wife and father-in-law were involved with. McCain and four other Senators pressured regulators to back off on their investigation of Lincoln Savings and Loan and its impending crash. McCain backed away from supporting Keating when it became public that criminal action was going to be taken against his friend, but even today the ties are there. Keating’s legal firm was the sixth largest bundler for McCain up until recently, for his current campaign. (Reported by OpenSecrets.org) http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/the-keating-50000.html

More on the Keating Five Scandal: http://www.michiganmessenger.com/3998/remember-the-keating-5-john-mccain-does

Kenneth Lewis, CEO and President of Bank of America said that the reason behind today’s financial crisis was “excessive leverage and greed”.

Perhaps the failure of Silver State Bank in Nevada was caused by that as well.

“It was the 11th failure this year of a federally insured bank.

Nevada regulators closed Silver State and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the bank, based in Henderson, Nev. It had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits as of June 30.

Andrew K. McCain, a son of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, since February but resigned in July after five months citing “personal reasons,” corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show. Andrew McCain also was a member of the bank’s audit committee, responsible for oversight of the company’s accounting.

The younger McCain, who is the chief financial officer of Hensley & Co., the beer distributorship of which Cindy McCain is chairwoman, is the Arizona senator’s adopted son from his first marriage.

Andrew McCain’s position on the Silver State board and departure were first reported Friday (September 5), by The Wall Street Journal online.

Silver State Bank ran into difficulty because of a substantial amount of “poor-quality loans primarily related to real estate development” in southern Nevada and other distressed markets, FDIC spokesman David Barr said.”

Click here for the whole story: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/silver-state-bank-in-nevada-is-shut/n20080905235709990024
Sound familiar?

Now that Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch have tanked (with AIG close behind) the insurers have to bail them out.

Henry Paulsen, Bush’s Treasury Secretary, claims that he won’t bail out Lehman Brothers, but he doesn’t rule out using taxpayer money to bail out these mismanaged financial institutions which have been raking in huge record compensation for their top executives even while these companies have been failing. (September 16, the U.S. Government is looking at bailing out AIG with $85-$90 Billion.)

Where was Bush when he could have stepped in as the mortgage crisis started? The Democrats have repeatedly attempted to put safeguards in place to avoid this type of financial crises, but the Republicans didn’t want regulations and repeatedly blocked them.

Where was Bush when he could have stepped in to put together a real energy plan to reduce the impact of energy prices on businesses and consumers?

Where was Bush when he could have stepped in to stop the speculation that drove oil prices up to $147 a barrel and more than $4.00 a gallon gas?

Where was Bush when he could have stopped the oil companies from exporting Alaskan oil to Asia, and kept it here at home to keep our gas prices low? (Instead of telling us that we had to drill for new oil that we haven’t found yet.)

And why is it that with oil prices down to $95 a barrel yesterday (September 15), we are still looking at $4.25 a gallon gas, and illegal price gouging in Florida and Texas at $5.50 a gallon when people were evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ike? (Oil prices dropped to below $92 a barrel on September 16). Wasn’t dropping the price of oil supposed to drop the price of gasoline?

Where was Bush when he could have stepped in to stop the financial institutions excessive leverage and greed? Where were our government regulators, and why didn’t they stop this before it became a crisis? (Maybe they had to recognize that it was a problem before they could take action? You can’t prevent a crisis, if you can’t see it coming.)

And where was Senator McCain as all these problems were building, with his 26 years of “experience”? McCain brags that he supported Bush 90% of the time. And until yesterday, he has repeatedly claimed that our economy was “fundamentally strong.”

McCain also bragged that he doesn’t know much about the economy. (His brother says that the men in his family never even had to deal with their own family finances – they always had their wives handle that. Is that why he picked a female running mate?)

So, Senator McCain, are we still in a “mental recession”?

And let’s look at the real record of taxes and the proposals of McCain versus Obama.

Even as McCain’s commercials fraudulently claim that Obama would raise taxes on the middle class, an independent analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center proves that Senator Obama would give substantially higher tax CUTS to the middle class, while McCain would give substantially higher tax cuts to the people making $250,000 or more, with much lower tax cuts for the less well off. 25% of McCain’s tax cuts go to the top one-tenth of 1% of the income earners.

Under McCain’s plan, if you earn between $38,000-$66,000, you would only get an average of $319 in tax breaks. Under Obama’s plan, you would get an average of $1,042.

Under McCain’s plan, if you earn between $19,000-$38,000, you would only get an average of $113 in tax breaks. Under Obama’s plan, you would get an average of $892.

Under McCain’s plan, if you earn under $19,000, you would only get an average of $19 in tax breaks. Under Obama’s plan you would get an average of $567 in tax breaks.

But under McCain’s plan, those earning between $227,000-$603,000, would get an average tax break of $7,871. Under Obama’s plan they would have an average increase of $12. Yes, that’s right, only $12.

And for those earning over $2.9 MILLION, McCain plan gives them an average tax break of $269,364, while Obama would raise their taxes by $701,885, (reversing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy).

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates_taxproposals_tpc/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/411750_updated_candidates_summary.pdf

Didn’t McCain say that he was cutting taxes for the “middle class”? What is his definition of the “middle class”, and why won’t he tell us?

Remember, McCain says that the cut-off dividing the middle class from the rich is a $5 million a year income. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/17/mccain-defines-rich/

During the Saddleback Presidential Forum Pastor Rick Warren had asked both candidates what their definition of middle class was.

Senator Obama answered, “if you are making $150,000 or less, as a family, then you are middle class.”

McCain, however, dismissed Warren’s question, asking in jest, “How about $5 million?”

WARREN: Everybody talks about, you know, taxing the rich, but not the poor, the middle class. At what point, give me a number, give me a specific number. Where do you move from middle class to rich? […]

MCCAIN: How about $5 million? No, but seriously, I don’t think you can, I don’t think seriously that the point is I’m trying to make, seriously, and I’m sure that comment will be distorted but the point is…that we want to keep people’s taxes low, and increase revenues. … So, it doesn’t matter really what my definition of rich is because I don’t want to raise anybody’s taxes. I really don’t.

In other words, McCain WON’T ANSWER THE QUESTION. Note that McCain’s stance on tax cuts for the wealthy now, are in opposition to what his stance was when he was campaigning against then Governor Bush in 2000.

So, according to a glib McCain, if you earn under $5 million a year, you are middle class. That, by the way, is the only way he can say that the majority of his tax cuts go to the “middle class”. Note also that Candy Crowley characterized his comment during Anderson Cooper 360 on September 15, 2008, claiming that McCain went on to clarify that the middle class was “this or that”. In fact, contrary to her characterization, McCain wouldn’t give any specific figure.

This is the same situation that we ran into when McCain was asked how long he would stay in Iraq, when he said that staying in Iraq for 100 years would “be fine with me.”

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFknKVjuyNk
See McCain defend his statements: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/14/mccain.king/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Then watch McCain flip flop again: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/04/mccain-100-years/

Asked about the remark later by Mother Jones’ David Corn, McCain reaffirmed it, “excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for ‘a thousand years’ or ‘a million years,’ as far as he was concerned.”

McCain’s latest comments complete a full flip-flop-flip. He previously said that the Korea model was “exactly” the right idea for Iraq. But in late November, he abandoned it on PBS’ Charlie Rose Show:

ROSE: Do you think that this — Korea, South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be, not in terms of their economic success but in terms of an American presence over the next, say, 20, 25 years, that we will have a significant amount of troops there?

MCCAIN: I don’t think so.

ROSE: Even if there are no casualties?

MCCAIN: No. But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws.

Whatever happened to staying there until the job is done, until the war is won – even though General Petraeus doesn’t believe that we can “win” this war?

Whenever McCain can’t answer a question with a well thought out policy position, he makes a joke out of it. When caught in a lie, he repeatedly changes his position regardless of what his previous publicly stated position has been. Is that what we want from a President of the United States?

Isn’t that what we’ve had for the last eight years?

Doug Cvetkovich was too.

Well, it’s not too late, but we need your help this Tuesday!

Doug Cvetkovich will be a write in candidate on the ballot Tuesday. Print out this email and take it with you to the poll to write his name in as your candidate to take on Sensenbrenner in the 5th Congressional district in November. You also need to write in the Democratic Party and the office of Congressman for the 5th CD.

You must spell Doug’s name correctly, so make sure you bring this email with you!

Doug is an exciting progressive candidate to take on the big money establishment. He is pro-choice, for universal healthcare, supports the Veteran for Peace and is against the Iraq War, passionate about racial justice, pro-LGBT rights, an environmentalist, eager to correct the erosion of our civil liberties and civil rights, pro-union, and he supports the Barack Obama campaign.

We can’t change Washington if we don’t change the players!

About Doug Cvetkovich:

Doug was born and raised in Milwaukee WI. His mother was a school teacher in Milwaukee Public Schools, and a member of the Wisconsin Education Association Council. His father was a factory worker, and a member of the United Auto Workers Union.

After his parents passed away when he was a teenager, Doug enlisted in the US Army from 1989 to 1992 as a Signals Intelligence Analyst, and received two Army Achievement Medals during his years of service. During that time, he volunteered at Camp Humphreys, Korea with the community center on post, and also volunteered as a soccer coach while stationed at Ft Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia. He fought for the rights of his fellow soldiers, by trying to get approval for on going training for the soldiers in his unit. He still views his time serving in the Army and the volunteering that he did, as some of the most fulfilling events of his life.

Since 1992, he has worked in the retail sector, volunteered for the John Kerry campaign by registering voters in King County, Washington, was a volunteer little league coach in Federal Way, Washington, and is currently employed as a District Manager for a retail service company.

After returning to Wisconsin to raise his family, Doug wasted no time getting involved in the Democratic Party in Wisconsin. He volunteers for several campaigns, and he currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Fifth Congressional District for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

He is married to his wife, Nicole, from Jackson, WI, and has 2 children. They currently live in Port Washington, Wisconsin.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 IS THE PRIMARY!
Get out and write in Doug Cvetkovich for the Democratic candidate in the 5th congressional district of Wisconsin!

Doug is working on putting together a web page for his General Election Campaign against the winner of the Republican primary election.

Snopes.com dug into the story and proved that it was FALSE.

(They also said that because this has been such a common strategy used by Republicans that they started investigating it as soon as they started hearing that it was hitting blogs around the country.)

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/afghanistan.asp

This is just one of the latest chain email smears that are being used against Senator Obama.

According to an Army Spokesperson quoted in the New York Daily News:

“These comments are inappropriate and factually incorrect,” said Bagram spokeswoman Army Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, who added that such political commentary is barred for uniformed personnel.

In a follow-up Blog entry, the Daily News reported that the e-mail’s author has recanted his original message:

Now he is asking that everyone delete the email and not forward it on, claiming that after checking his sources, he found that the information that he put in his email was wrong.

Unfortunately, anyone not reading the retraction will still have the same negative perception of him.

In addition to the official military denials, a Department of Defense video shows Senator Obama meeting, talking, and eating breakfast with U.S. troops in Afghanistan (and includes a brief interview with a soldier who noted that Obama “took time out of his schedule to come over and visit with us, not just at this camp but at other surrounding camps in Afghanistan.”)

Snopes also received a flood of messages from U.S. troops who met Senator Obama in his Middle East trip in Afghanistan and elsewhere, who reported quite different experiences than CPT Jeffery Porter, including a letter from another soldier who says that CPT Porter wasn’t even there.

Another wrote: “I don’t know who this captain saw, but it wasn’t the Barack Obama I just saw in Afghanistan. Unlike most of the pols who breeze on through for nothing more than brief photo ops before leaving he was warm, friendly & engaging (as much as security would allow) with the troops he met and he was genuinely interested in us and our mission and how we could best serve our country. When Obama went to Jordan a few days ago they said “The guy gets it. Sharp, aware and a very good listener. He doesn’t seem stuck in any preconceived positions.” Those are the qualities I’d like to see in my Commander in Chief. While Obama was out visiting the troops, what was John McCain doing…?, playing golf with his rich cronies (Bush Sr.) in Kennebunkport and whining about how much press coverage Obama was getting. Definitely “not” the qualities I want to see in my Commander in Chief.”

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that it was unlikely that the e-mail’s author would face any disciplinary measures.

Can you imagine what would have happened if an Obama supporter had done something like this to McCain?

You may also recall, that while security was supposed to be tight, and the location and itinerary for Senator Obama was supposed to be kept secret until after he left, Senator McCain was blabbing to reporters about where Senator Obama was going to be and when!!!

I guess security for another American means nothing to Senator McCain if he can provide intelligence to our enemies, so that he can get them to do his dirty work for him, and get himself into the White House.

Or will Senator McCain claim that he didn’t know what he was doing when he was divulging sensitive information to the whole world?

How secure does that make you to trust McCain with the safety of the United States, or Democrats in general if he gains the White House?

How secure does it make you to consider that he has been a member of Congress for the last 26 years?

Maybe that explains the mess we are in.

Republicans also claim that speculators don’t have a significant effect on gas prices. Oh Really? Remember Enron and how they drove up energy prices over four times what it should have been, and joked about little old grandmothers who had to choose between their heating bills and feeding themselves?

But the real culprit is based on simple supply and demand based on the lack of fuel efficiency that we have in our vehicles and appliances, and the higher prices that prevent more and more people from having the freedom to use their expensive gas guzzlers.

The price of gas has recently dropped from its high by $25 a barrel of oil and $0.50 a gallon of gas or more only a month ago, which has nothing to do with increased oil supplies. We haven’t had any significant oil import increases, and we certainly haven’t gained more oil from drilling from that ban that was just lifted. (The offshore oil drilling bans were put into place by Presidents Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, by the way. Both of them are Republicans.) And we haven’t had any oil companies build any more oil refineries in that time period either.

That demonstrates that it is high demand that drove up the prices initially. The reduced usage of the oil stocks that resulted because people couldn’t afford to drive dropped the prices next. This was followed by speculators reducing their expectation that oil prices would continue to rise in the near future, thereby dropping the price of oil and gasoline even further (and faster).

This only reinforces the conservation argument, that higher fuel/energy efficiency which reduces the overall consumption of the limited fuels that we do have, has a drastic effect on prices. It only stands to reason that if you increased your average vehicle fuel efficiency from 20 mpg to 50 mpg, that you would reduce your consumption, given the same miles driven over the same amount of time. (15,000 miles driven annually at 20 mpg uses 750 gallons of gas. 15,000 miles driven annually at 50 mpg uses 300 gallons of gas. That yields a savings of 450 gallons annually, or 60% of what you would have used before.) That also means you can drive 2 ½ years on the same amount of fuel that you used to use in 1 year. If every car on the road did that, we would more than double the length of time that our oil reserves and current oil imported would last us.

Chevy has a few vehicles that get a little over 30 mpg. The six speed four cylinder Malibu (22/32 mpg) and the Aveo (26-37 mpg). The Mini Cooper gets 26-37 mpg. The Smart fortwo gets 33-41 mpg. Honda has vehicles that get over 30 mpg (Accord 21-31) (Fit 27-34) and even up to 40/45 mpg (The Honda Civic Hybrid). Toyota’s Yaris (29-36) and Corolla (28-37) mpg. Toyota’s Prius is rated for 45 on the highway and 48 in the city. We have a Prius and regularly get in the mid 50 mpg range, and even up to the mid 60’s on occasion. We very rarely drop below 50 mpg.

A Bellevue, Washington company, AFS Trinity Corporation has developed an upgrade to the Saturn Vue gas/electric hybrid, so that it gets an effective 150 mpg. By adding super capacitors and a plug in module to the vehicle, it allows the vehicle to drive 40 miles on battery power alone, and regenerate the power to the battery by capturing the energy from braking and the vehicles downhill motion, in addition to using the plug in module to recharge the battery every night. It costs you about $1 a night to recharge the battery. If the vehicle was driving on gas alone, it would only be getting 26 mpg.

So getting that type of fuel mileage isn’t out of the question. It is only dependent on whether our political and industrial leaders have the will and the intelligence to act on this issue now. The AFS Trinity Corporation debuted its 150 mpg vehicle in Detroit in January of 2008 and hoped to gain the attention of the big three auto companies to mass produce them. They still don’t have any takers. The company is planning on building hybrid conversion kits and training people to install them on vehicles if GM, Ford and Chrysler don’t act on mass producing the 150 mpg vehicles themselves. See more by going to the URL below.

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2008/01/13/074940.html

The U.S. currently only has an average fleet fuel average of about 20-25 mpg. Communist China has an average fleet fuel average of 30-35 mpg. Japan has an average fleet fuel average of 40-45 mpg.

The U.S. uses 80% of the world’s oil, yet only has 5% of the world’s population. We cannot continue to use oil at that rate and not expect to pay a huge price for it in some way, either by its cost, or losses from war, or both.

Bush continues to push for drilling even after saying that we are addicted to oil (He forgot to say that he was the drug pusher). Cheney’s only response was “oil and gas, gas and oil, drill, drill, drill”. Not unexpected from the former CEO of Halliburton, a company that makes oil drilling equipment and also profits from no-bid construction and logistical contracts with the military in the Iraq War. And McCain? He just follows along with Bush and Cheney, pushing for off-shore oil drilling.

Senator Obama has been pushing for the accelerated development of alternative energy, and increased fuel efficiency in our vehicles.

And the truth about whether or not additional oil drilling would have an affect on our gas pricing? We import 70% of the oil that we currently use. There is no way that we can drill for, and process that amount of oil off of our shores to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil in the near future, regardless of how big any oil reserves we find happen to be, and regardless of their source, whether it be ANWR, or oil shale or offshore drilling.

The Energy Information Administration confirms that additional drilling in the Pacific and Atlantic Coast, in addition to any increase in drilling in the areas that currently produce, would not have any effect on prices until 2030.

And the oil companies? Exxon Mobil just reported another record profit for this quarter of 11.68 Billion, breaking its profit record from last quarter of $10.26 Billion.

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/bbdp/exxon-reports-another-record-profit/109755

So this year, as you are forced to choose between filling your gas tank and feeding yourself and your kids, or paying for your prescription drugs, or your rent/mortgage, show up to vote and consider your choices at the ballot box very carefully.

The future you save may be your own.

You can find the original story at this link:

http://blogs.jsonline.com/allpoliticswatch/archive/tags/Elections/default.aspx

Madison – Leaders of Wisconsin’s political parties usually stay out of primary election fights, since they know they have to be on speaking terms with whoever wins the party’s nomination and goes on to the general election.

Not this year. The state Democratic Party’s Administrative Committee on Friday endorsed one Assembly incumbent, Rep. Gary Sherman of Port Wing, against his September primary challenger.

And, state Party Chairman Joe Wineke said, the same committee may soon convene again to offer the same endorsements to six Assembly Democrats from Milwaukee County who face intra-party opponents.

This year is different because “conservatives, if not outright Republicans” filed nomination papers to run as Democrats, Sherman told his fellow Democratic Party leaders during a conference call meeting Friday.
And, when non-Democrats line up to challenge one-of-us-Democrats, Sherman added, “We have a right to defend the integrity of our (party nomination) process.”

State Democratic Party leaders groused that some of the conservative challengers to the good-old-Democrats had been put up to it by former Republican state Sen. Tom Reynolds of West Allis, although linking a specific candidate to Reynolds can be hard to prove. The mischief-making Reynolds lost his re-election bid in 2006.

The six incumbent Democrats with challengers in the September primary are: Reps. Annette “Polly” Williams, Pedro Colon, Tony Staskunas, Leon Young, Barbara Toles and Christine Sinicki. Together, they have served 75 years in the Assembly.

OUR UPDATE FOLLOWS:

Republicans Running as Democrats in Milwaukee County AD Primary Race

The following list shows the Assembly Districts and the Republican
challengers posing as Democrats in the primaries, who are known to be
supported by Tom Reynolds ( R ), whose “Clean Sweep” organization and
Endeavor Press Print Shop are providing them with financial
contributions and printing services.

(The names listed in parenthesis after the District are the current
Democratic incumbents.)

8th District (Colon) – Jose Guzman
Cash on Hand – $25.00
Incurred obligations – $316.11 to Endeavor Press
Contributions from Committees:
Clean Sweep Wisconsin – $75.00 in-kind for graphic design
5.00 in-kind for voting data

10th District (Williams) – Charista Allen
Cash on Hand – $415.00
Incurred obligations – $158.00 to Endeavor Press
Contributions from Committees:
Clean Sweep Wisconsin – $75.00 in-kind graphic design

15th District (Staskunas) – Josh Hoisington
Cash on Hand – $25.00
Incurred Obligations – $310.11 to Endeavor Press
Contributions from Committees:
Clean Sweep Wisconsin – $75.00 in-kind for graphic design

16th District (Young) – David King
Report not available at GAB as of morning of 7/28/08
Contributions from Committees:
Clean Sweep Wisconsin (from their finance report): $75.00 in-
kind

17th District (Toles) – Samantha Bady
Cash on Hand – $200.00
Incurred Obligations – $158.40 to Endeavor Press
Contributions from Committees
Clean Sweep Wisconsin – $75.00 in-kind for graphic design
- $40.00 in-kind for flyers

20th District (Sinciki) – Phil Landowski
Cash on Hand – $4.51
Incurred Obligations – None
Contributions from Committees:
Clean Sweep Wisconsin – $75.00 in-kind for graphic design

Clean Sweep Wisconsin PAC was created and is operated by Tom
Reynolds. The address for the PAC is the same as his voting address
and his printing business, Endeavor Press: 9430 W Schlinger Avenue,
West Allis

All of the challengers to the Milwaukee area incumbents have all
received in-kind contributions from Clean Sweep Wisconsin and except
for Landowski and King, all have done business with Endeavor Press
and owe that business money, which is owned by Tom Reynolds.

More details on the candidates in the Democratic primary against Incumbents are:

State Assembly District 8:
Pedro Colon Democratic Incumbent (Paid member in good standing of the Democratic Party):
Challengers running as Democrats: Laura L. Manriquez (paid member of the Democratic Party), and (Jose Guzman FAKE)

State Assembly District 10
Annette Polly Williams Incumbent
Challenger running as Democrat: Charisha Allen FAKE

State Assembly District 15
Tony Staskunas Incumbent Paid member in good standing of the Democratic Party
Challenger running as a Democrat: Josh Hoisington FAKE

State Assembly District 16
Leon D. Young Incumbent Doesn’t show up at Democratic events and not a member of the Democratic Party.
Challengers running as Democrats: Andy Parker (showed up at a Milw. County Meeting recently), Richard M. Badger (showed up at a Milw. County Meeting recently – has support in the party) and (David D. King FAKE)

State Assembly District 17
Barbara L. Toles Incumbent
Challenger running as Democrat: (Samantha H. Bady FAKE)

State Assembly District 20
Christine M. Sinicki Incumbent (hasn’t paid her Democratic Party dues for awhile)
Challengers running as Democrats: Steve Sutherland (no information), and (Philip Landowski FAKE)

The Milwaukee County Democratic Party has not endorsed any candidates for these seats at this time, but it is being taken up by the Milwaukee County Party Executive Committee.

We are asking that the individuals funded by Tom Reynold’s “Clean Sweep” organization NOT be supported by Democrats, because they are considered FAKE democrats, (who are really conservatives running as Democrats rather than as Republicans because they couldn’t otherwise get elected).

Martha Love, Chair of the Milwaukee County Democratic Party is not willing to endorse candidates at this time, even those who are incumbent Democrats, if they are not Democrats in good standing. (That means that they need to be fully paid up members of the Democratic Party and working with the local Democratic Party in their districts.)

Fred Kessler has asked that members support all of the incumbent Democrats, but there are some districts that are being contested by legitimate Democratic challengers. Those are the individuals who are NOT being backed by Tom Reynold’s “Clean Sweep” organization.

We will update you as we get more information.

John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can’t, “then I lose. I lose,” the Republican said.
He quickly backed off that remark.
“Let me not put it that stark,” the likely GOP nominee told reporters on his campaign bus. “Let me just put it this way: Americans will judge my candidacy first and foremost on how they believe I can lead the country both from our economy and for national security. Obviously, Iraq will play a role in their judgment of my ability to handle national security.”
“If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose.’ But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me, my support of the surge,” McCain added. “Clearly, I am tied to it to a large degree.”

Reported by Liz Sidoti AP Writer Rocky River, Ohio Feb. 25, 2008 speaking with reporters after a town hall meeting in Cleveland, Ohio

Flip-flop…

Yet earlier in that town hall-style meeting in Cleveland, in this same report, McCain accused Democrats of distorting his earlier comment when he said that he supported the U.S. staying in Iraq militarily for 100 years (this was after he was asked from a member of the audience if the U.S. might be staying in Iraq for 50 years.)

This time, he said “The war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes, although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years. But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us.”

Does any of that sound familiar? … perhaps an echo of comments made by Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others in the Bush Administration?

“Mission Accomplished”, “The war will be over in weeks, not months”, “The insurgency is in its last throes”, “The war will cost less than $50 Billion and most of it will be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.” “We’re only going to stay as long as it takes to train the Iraqi troops to take over.”

We’ve heard this fiction before.

These are the same lies that are being repackaged for a hopeful but naïve public who believe that because John McCain has a war record (having been shot down and held in a Vietnamese prison camp, and tortured for years until he signed statements repudiating the U.S. for our involvement in the war.)

Flip-flop…

This is the same John McCain who spoke out against water boarding as real torture, until he wanted to get Mitt Romney’s endorsement, and then changed his position on it, claiming it really wasn’t torture anymore. Now, I don’t blame McCain for giving in to the Vietnamese torture, it was understandable that he would finally break, but he broke on the issue of water boarding as torture far faster and easier in order to get Mitt Romney’s endorsement. There’s nothing showing him standing up for any principles here.

Flip-flop…

This is the same John McCain, who has repeatedly spoken out against the Bush Administration policies and tactics in the war in Iraq, but in March 2006, retooled his campaign, building it out with members of the Bush circle, (and in exchange, McCain has thrown his support behind Bush’s policies). In addition, this retooling is basing McCain’s pitch on the notion that he is the only sensible, elect-able and competent commander who can take control of the war on terror. (This is the same argument that Hillary is trying to make – that she is the only one with the experience, is elect-able and can be commander in chief on day one. Obama says that he was the only one among them with the judgment to say that we shouldn’t go into Iraq and that we were going into Iraq for all the wrong reasons. You can decide who is leading us in the right direction.)

But how is supporting and continuing a war which is fast approaching
• 4,000 dead U.S. Servicemen and women, along with
• almost 30,000 wounded U.S. Servicemen and women, and 600,000 dead Iraqis,
• with a price tag to the American Taxpayer fast approaching $1Trillion dollars,
• with about one and a half times that amount in costs for continued medical care for our wounded veterans in the years to come, and the cost to rebuild our army and National Guard, as well as to replace all of the equipment that was destroyed in Iraq….

….How does that qualify McCain to be commander in chief?

With all of the economic problems that we are having here at home, with an economic outlook that even Fed Chief Ben Bernanke calls “grim”. (Bush still doesn’t have a clue, and hadn’t even heard analyst predictions of $4.00 a gallon gasoline by this spring. And, Friday March 1st, the stock market took another dump, dropping 315 points, the second time this year that the stock market took such a large hit.)

With the stock market continuing to tank; and with a home mortgage crisis causing millions of families to lose their homes; with all the jobs that are continuing to be shipped overseas; and corporations going offshore so that they don’t have to pay any U.S. taxes…

….and with John McCain himself admitting that he doesn’t know anything about economics…..

….how does John McCain, as the self-proclaimed, “best candidate to be commander in chief”, propose to pay for all of his continued war time spending over the next 100 years, when the current commander in chief has not paid for any of his $750 Billion from the past five years? Yes, that’s right, while it has been budgeted for and approved by Congress, (not in the actual annual federal budget, but as separate appropriations, so that it doesn’t show you what we are really racking up in Federal DEBT), it has not been paid for. According to George W. Bush, that is for future presidents and future generations to figure out and pay for. And that is what John McCain is proposing. Just MORE OF THE SAME.

Yes – John McCain – More of the Same; Just Like Bush, Only Older.

Our government just racks up more debt and prints out more worthless greenbacks to pay for things they don’t have any assets to pay for, so the value of the dollar continues to drop and consumer prices continue to increase.

To get a better idea of how the Iraq War is actually being fought and how it puts hundreds of billions of dollars of profits from no-bid contracts into Bush and Republican Party donors’ pockets, voters need to see the evidence of rigged war profiteering scams.

They need to see that, rather than there being any real effort to actually win this war, the collusion between corrupt politicians and greedy CEOs have turned the Iraq War into a feeding trough for them to drain the U.S. Treasury and keep U.S. Taxpayers in debt for the next several generations.

There is a documentary by Robert Greenwald, titled, “Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers”, which documents with interviews of former employees of Halliburton, KBR, Titan, CACI, Blackwater, and other right wing businesses who have profited by their sweetheart, no-bid contracts with the Bush Administration. These were people who were staunch Republicans, who supported the war and supported Republicans, until they saw what was really going on in Iraq. It also interviews soldiers who have witnessed fraudulent billing going on by companies who are ripping off U.S. taxpayers, and putting the lives of civilian contractors and our U.S. military at risk all in the name of the almighty dollar.

http://gobnf.org/i/ifs/ifs_quotes.jpg (Poster from Iraq for Sale with comments from movie reviewers.)

Not only does it document how a contractor billed the U.S. government for cleaning water to make it potable for use by our servicemen and women, but didn’t treat the water AT ALL, but it also showed how the rank and file servicemen and civilian contractors were repeatedly told to keep their mouths shut about it.

It also shows votes in the U.S. Congress where Democrats repeatedly attempted to hold military contractors accountable for their malfeasance, and fraudulent billing for services that they did not provide, but which Republicans in Congress REPEATEDLY BLOCKED. Even when Democrats reduced their demands to only prevent companies from being awarded contracts when they had been shown to over bill the U.S. Taxpayers by MORE THAN $100 Million Dollars, the Republican side VOTED AGAINST IT.

The war has been going on now for five years longer than what the Bush Administration told us it would take to “win” the war, and has cost 15 times more than what they told us it would cost, yet Republicans in Congress and even Bush supporters across the country refuse to question why?! They refuse to allow an investigation into the conduct of the war. They refuse to allow a proper investigation into the budget overages and the continued escalation in costs. They refuse to allow proper investigations into rampant fraud on the part of contractors and Pentagon officials and they refuse to allow proper investigations into whether or not contractors are actually supplying what they claim they are supplying.

If YOU were charged 15 times more than you were quoted, for a job that you asked to be done, and it took 5 years longer than what you were told it would take, wouldn’t you want to know why? Wouldn’t you want to know if there was a better way to do the job, so that it wouldn’t take so long, or cost so much? And wouldn’t you want to fire those responsible for their incompetence?

Obviously, the Republican members of Congress don’t want you to know, and are refusing to ask the questions.

Several of the Congressmen and Senators who were shown in the documentary, supporting the award of contracts to companies who massively over billed the U.S. Taxpayers, have since decided not to run for re-election.

You can see trailers from the film or buy the film online from:
store.bravenewfilms.org/ifsdvd06.php

I would encourage anyone who hasn’t see the film, particularly if you are a Republican who actually believes what the Bush Administration and McCain campaign are telling you, to see the film for yourself and then make up your own mind about what is happening.

Forget for once the differences between Democrats and Republicans. If you see this evidence – and it is damning, you should be furious as an AMERICAN.

Corporate lobbyists who control the quality and flow of goods and services which are vitally needed by our fighting men and women, are putting our military behind their profits, and clearly Republicans in Congress and in the Bush Administration are supporting the War Profiteers, not the troops.

Flip-flop…

Yet John McCain, this self-proclaimed “maverick”, who claims to be different and unaffected by lobbyists, has forty or fifty campaign staffers who are….lobbyists!

McCain has promised that he will continue this war in Iraq, and you can bet that with his new found appreciation for the Bush circle of friends who are supporting his campaign, that he and his lobbyist staffers will continue to show their appreciation, the way they always have, to their donors.

More information on the 5th CD DPW fundraiser and DVD distribution follows:

I would encourage activists to get as many copies of this film as possible into the hands of as many people as possible so that they can see for themselves what is happening.
Share this with your friends, neighbors and relatives. Organize large viewings and discussions of the film so that people can start to understand what is at stake and what they can do to take action.

The 5th Congressional District Democratic Party of Wisconsin Executive Committee is organizing a fundraising campaign, to purchase these DVDs in bulk lots and distribute them to anyone who wants them.

We will give them out to anyone for a minimum $12.00 donation or more, (plus shipping and handling if we have to mail it to you), and will have them available at:

the 5th Congressional District DPW Convention on April 13, (open only to delegates and alternates who have been elected at their County Delegate level to go on to the DPW State Convention.)

or 5th Congressional District DPW Delegate Caucuses on May 4, (open only to delegates and alternates who have been elected at their County Delegate Caucuses).

(If anyone is not going to attend either of these events, but knows someone who will and wants a copy, please tell them in advance, and have them contact us and send in checks or money orders with the number of DVDs requested, in advance so that we know how many units we’ll have to have available. If anyone is anticipating that they would like to order larger quantities please contact us and let us know in advance and we will provide you with directions on where to send checks or money orders to, and how you can get the DVDs if you won’t be able to attend either of the above events. For those who send checks, there will be a ten day wait for the check to clear before we can ship the DVD.

Or, if people won’t be able to attend these events but would still like to help in the fundraiser, or order copies of the DVDs:

Send inquiries to chair5thcddpw@gmail.com

You can also order them online directly from the link provided, or ask your County DPW Chair to organize bulk ordering so you can have them available for distribution and fundraising for your local events. Other organizations are welcome to do the same thing.)

Les Nakamoto

Chair 5th Congressional District Democratic Party of Wisconsin

What some of you might recognize, is that the voice of many beer commercials, which was also the voice of many Anti-Democratic smears during the 2004 Presidential campaigns, is the same voice behind this commercial.

The name of the organization funding the commercial, implying itself to be a Pro-Democracy group (Defense of Democracies), is anything but that.

Recent investigative reports, as well as a Bush Administration official, have admitted that the only reason to pass this bill, is to hold harmless, the telecom industry from lawsuits that are bound to be filed against them because of the illegal, unConstitutional nature of these illegal wiretaps, for any actions which they have taken in the past, or which they might take in the future. (That last piece was based on Bush’s own statement.)

There is no danger of any Al Qaida plots being missed, (as a result of the wiretaps no longer being in place – which is what the commercial implies), because the telecoms have all reported that they are continuing to provide this service to the Bush Administration and your government funded intelligence services, (at taxpayer expense), in spite of the fact that the legislation has not been reauthorized.

The only reason for the push for the reauthorization of this bill is to protect the telecoms from being sued for illegal activities. PERIOD.

Keith Olbermann – MSNBC reported on February 28th, that Republicans are puzzled that they aren’t getting large campaign donations from…THE TELECOM INDUSTRY!

Puzzled? Olbermann explains it by saying that the Telecom industry might possibly be upset with the Republicans by being forced into this situation in the first place, by the Republicans.

There are many Democrats and Independents who want to be Democrats this year (and even a few Republicans), and are even interested in getting involved in our Party process.

For those of you who are, you have an historic opportunity to get involved in selecting the Democratic nominee for our Presidential candidate.

Tuesday, February 19, will be Wisconsin’s Primary Elections.

Wisconsin does not require registration by Party. Individuals may register to vote up to 10 days in advance of any election. They may also register to vote at the polls with proof of at least 10 days of residency.

Wisconsin State Law mandates an open primary. However, voters may cast a ballot for one Party only, thereby eliminating crossover from one Party to another for specific races within an election.

Participation in Wisconsin’s delegate selection process, other than the February 19, 2008 primary, is open to all voters who wish to participate as Democrats who file a written declaration of Democratic Party preference with the Democratic State Party. (Rules 2.A. & 2.C & Reg. 4.3.)

No persons shall participate or vote in the nominating process for the Democratic presidential candidate who also participates in the nominating process of any other party for the corresponding elections. (Rule 2.E.)

No person shall vote in more than one meeting, which is the first meeting in the delegate selection process. (Rule 3.E. & Reg. 4.6.)

In addition to the primary caucuses and elections, each state has their own Delegate election process at different levels. Wisconsin is allowed a total of 48 district-level delegates and 8 district-level alternates. (Rule 8.C., Call, I.B. & I.I.)

You can be involved, but in order for you to do so, you have to start at the County level to first get elected as a delegate to go onto our 5th Congressional District Delegate Elections so that you can have a chance to be elected as a delegate to our National Convention in Denver this August.

County Delegate Elections are to be held on April 6, 2008. Registration starts at 12:00 PM CST and closes when the caucuses begin at 2:00 P.M CST.

Each county within the 5th CD is allowed the following number of delegates and an equal number of alternates within the 5th CD:

Ozaukee 30
Washington 34
Waukesha 98
Jefferson 4
Milwaukee 48 (Milwaukee has part of the city in the 5th CD, and part in the 1st CD, but the majority of the city is in the 4th CD)

If you live in these counties within the boundaries of the 5th Congressional District, and would like to get involved, but are not currently an active member of the Democratic Party, other than voting for Democratic candidates, contact your local County Democratic Party Chairs to find out where their meetings are being held and where and when their Delegate elections are being held.

If you are located in the 1st or 4th Congressional Districts, contact the County Chairs within those Districts for further information.

To contact your local County Democratic Party Chairs

Go to: http://www.wisdems.org/ht/d/Committees/committeeLevel/3/pid/734851

Then select the letter that the county you live in begins with (at the bottom of the page).

Scroll down the page until you find the name of your county, and you will see the contact information for your County Democratic Party Chair.

The Congressional District Delegate Elections are to be held on May 4. Registration starts at 12:00 PM CST and closes when the caucuses begin at 2:00 P.M CST.

The 5th CD Delegate election will elect from among the elected County Delegates, 3 males and 2 females for a total of 5 delegates to move onto the Democratic National Convention for nomination of our Democratic Presidential candidate. We are also allowed one alternate who, according to the formula in the DPW’s Delegate Selection Plan for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, must be male.

To get more information about the convention, delegate election process and the timeline of events for our elections you can download the following .pdf documents. (You will need Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer in order to view them. You can download Adobe Acrobat for free from their website at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/ )

The Wisconsin party site about the convention:
http://www.wisdems.org/ht/d/sp/i/1019195/pid/1019195

The full state delegate selection plan (PDF):
http://www.wisdems.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/1117822

Timeline of events:
http://www.wisdems.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/1126793

For those of you who are also interested in becoming more active in the Democratic Party on a local, regional or national level, you can start by becoming a member of the Democratic Party. You can sign up online here: http://www.wisdems.org/ht/d/Join/pid/460648

It’s time for a change in our government and in politics as usual.

Become part of the wave that is making this historic change.

Les Nakamoto

Chair, 5th Congressional District Democratic Party of Wisconsin

The upcoming elections for the Congress, the governorships and state Legislatures are all about whether you stand with or against a rubberstamp Republican Party which has stood behind every misstep, every lie and every cover-up that the Bush Administration and the Republican congress have foisted upon the American public.

Republican leadership has rubberstamped Bush policies across-the-board, favoring the wealthy and the corporations while destroying the middle class.  Republicans have given tax breaks to corporations that outsource millions of jobs overseas while destroying entire industries here at home.  Republicans have given tax breaks to corporations that off-shore their headquarters overseas so that they don’t have to pay corporate taxes, putting even more tax burden on the middle class.

Republicans have given a free pass for a failed policy to Bush and Rumsfeld to continue a war in Iraq with no strategy.  Republicans have allowed the complete lack of accounting for the out of control spending in Iraq which gives Bush loyalists huge profits for “services” provided:

• From construction projects which supposedly rebuilt Iraqi schools for millions of dollars but in the end only provided tens of thousands of dollars for the actual construction after middlemen shaved off their profits;
• to “support” infrastructures which were supposed to replace military specialists, at a huge increase in costs, but ended up in disastrous shortages of water, munitions and replacement parts for vital equipment for our fighting men and women on the front lines;
• to the “cost cutting measures” which cut pay for our front line combat military in order to pay for defective body armor (which Rep. James Sensenbrenner supported by claiming that our military could get one or the other but not both);
• to giving Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments to provide not meals for our troops, but only “the capacity to provide the meals” that they didn’t provide, and rotten meat and unsafe, contaminated, and unfiltered water to our troops when they did provide it.

The Republican Congress has denied increasing the minimum wage for nine years, while approving wage increases for themselves over that same period.  It has repeatedly denied affordable healthcare for all Americans while receiving the best healthcare available, at no cost to them, but paid for by taxpayers.  Republicans have cut education assistance programs across the board, denying college to hundreds of thousands of students who have shown academic ability, but weren’t fortunate enough to have been born into wealth.

Republicans have talked about their conservative values and morals and wooed the conservative right wing Christians for their votes while ridiculing them privately.

Republicans have talked about how they have pushed for legislation that puts sexual predators in jail, yet put Mark Foley into a position where he was actually their lead man as Chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, even as Republican leaders knew about Foley’s sexual advances towards underage male congressional pages for at least three years. The Washington Post reports that Republican Rep. Jim Kolbe knew about the emails six years ago.  Republicans leaders did nothing about it except to cover it up.  Rep. Sensenbrenner has refused to respond to requests to divulge what he knew about Foley’s behavior and when he knew it.

In typical Sensenbrenner fashion, when asked to comment on the Foley scandal, Sensenbrenner blamed the page system rather than Foley.  Whatever happened to individual and adult responsibility?  Ironically, the sex crime legislation that Foley pushed through makes internet solicitation for sex a felony. 

President Bush actually waived legal sanctions against Saudi Arabia under the sex trade legislation that Rep. Sensenbrenner touts.  In September 2005, Reuters reported that President Bush issued a Presidential Determination as a memorandum to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waiving sanctions against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Ecuador – countries that the United States had earlier criticized as among the world’s worst offenders in human trafficking.

Representative Sensenbrenner’s positions on promoting punitive legislation against illegal immigrants are hinged on actions against minorities. The fence that is supposed to protect us against terrorists is scheduled to be built on the border with Mexico, even though the 9/11 terrorists who entered this country came in through Canada.

And while he takes a public punitive position against the minority immigrants and their “21st century slave master employers” as he calls them, he benefits financially from his investments in the very companies that employ illegal aliens for their cheap labor, particularly Halliburton which enjoys no bid defense contracts and Darden, which owns the Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants.  In wholly disgraceful practice, Halliburton employed hundreds of illegal aliens as part of their contract to rebuild New Orleans.

And where has the Republican leadership been in insuring that the Bush White House is following the law?  During the Clinton Administration, there were over 200 investigations by Republican congressional leadership into White House policies. During the Bush Administration, there have been exactly ZERO.

And even if a Republican politician might have the backbone to privately disagree with Bush’s policies, they are strongarmed in the back rooms to vote for them, or are denied financial backing for future campaigns.  The stench of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay’s illegal campaign contributions funneled from what were supposedly children’s charities, blanket the Republican Party across the board.

• Randy “Duke” Cunningham accepted $2.4 million in bribes from Defense Contractors and then used his influence while serving on the powerful defense appropriations subcommittee that approves Defense Department contracts to manipulate those Defense Department contracts on behalf of his “donors”.
• In Ohio, evidence of voter disenfranchisement and thefts of public money going to Republican loyalists is still being uncovered.
• Republican Bob Ney, who was convicted on October 13, 2006 on corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff influence peddling scandals has yet to resign from office, in spite of his attorney’s statement that Ney was “going to resign from office in the coming weeks” several weeks ago when Ney pled guilty.  The Republican leadership has sworn to remove Ney from office immediately … That is, once they reconvene in November, AFTER the elections.  In the meantime, Ney continues to collect on his $165,100 salary and will be eligible to collect 20% of his salary as a pension when he turns 62.

(Ney is the eighth person convicted in the Abramoff influence peddling scandals, including a former Ney staffer, Neil Volz, whom Ney admitted encouraging to violate the one year ban against lobbying by former staffers. Ney accepted a stream of valuable things from Abramoff and the lobbyists he hired from Capitol Hill, among them Volz.  The gifts included luxury vacations that prosecutors valued at more than $170,000. Ney, for his part, sought to insert four amendments into a 2002 election overhaul bill to benefit Abramoff's clients.  He also admitted helping another client win a multimillion-dollar contract to provide wireless communication services to the U.S. Capitol.  The congressman admitted that he twice inserted comments in the Congressional Record aimed at bolstering a bid by Abramoff to buy a casino cruise line in Florida in 2000. Earlier this year, Ney's committee passed ethics legislation to strip convicted lawmakers of their pensions, but the bill died in the Republican controlled House.  Ney championed the provision, saying it was designed to hold "members of Congress and those they work with to the highest standards in order to ensure that those who abuse the public trust will be dealt with accordingly." While Ney faces up to 10 years in prison, the government has recommended only 27 months in prison.)

• Diebold (the company which makes a large portion of the voting machines that our votes are "counted" on) CEO Wally O’Dell — who promised that his voting machines would deliver Ohio to President Bush in the 2004 elections — died before he could be investigated and convicted, just as Kenneth “Kenny Boy” Lay, who was the top fund raiser for President Bush and the founder of Enron, also a key player in the secret Cheney Energy Policy meetings, died before he could be tried for his crimes in defrauding workers and investors in Enron.  Jeffrey Skilling, Enron's CEO, recently received a 24-year sentence.

So where is the righteous indignation from rank and file Republicans against all of these immoral crimes by their Republican leadership?  Why do they still support Bush and other politicians who allow Bush’s policies to continue to drag the county down?

Perhaps it is because they benefit financially by his policies.  Perhaps it is because they are so totally disconnected from reality that they have no idea that all of these things are going on.  Perhaps it is because they truly believe that their own representatives couldn’t be responsible for all the nation’s problems, while all the other guys are.

Whatever their excuses, the reality is that the Republican Party has been taken over by extremists who have no need for and no interest in ideas or policies other than their own, in spite of repeated failures.  The “representation” that you vote for when voting for Republicans is nothing more than a rubberstamp for Bush’s failed policies.

John Gard is attempting to take over the 8th Congressional seat that Mark Green is leaving in his bid for governor, and both of them have received substantial campaign contributions and appearances from Bush or Cheney for fundraisers. But even those who try to distance themselves from Bush’s policies today while on the campaign trail, have long been supportive of those policies and will continue to be so if they are re-elected.  If Green is elected, you can say goodbye to fair elections in Wisconsin. 

And Rep. Sensenbrenner, who claimed that President Bush “just doesn’t get it” when referring to Bush’s stance on immigration policy, and claims that he is at odds with President Bush on a number of issues, nonetheless repeatedly takes opportunities to stand behind President Bush during signing ceremonies.

Some professional conservative pundits would have you belive that Republicans like Sensenbrenner are merely being “conservative" and that their actions are somehow being misconstrued, while conservative backers “know the real Sensenbrenner.”  But that is precisely the point. Republican politicians are just being conservatives.  No compassion about them.  They consider themselves above the law and even above reproach. And that is why they need to be removed from office.

So before you vote November 7th, ask yourself, “What are my values and are they in line with Bush’s?”  If they are not, why continue to vote for another rubberstamp for Bush?

In it, they write that: 

“In the House there were three key votes to gauge how serious members there have been about ethics reform.  A vote on April 27^th essentially dictated which amendments would be allowed.  Blocked amendments included those that would have set up an Office of Public Integrity, restricted the revolving door that allows former members to become lobbyists and made members pay higher charter rates – rather than first-class rates – for flying on those corporate jets.’ 

They go on to say that: 

“A “no” vote was a vote for stricter rules.  Voting that way were Democratic Reps. Tammy Baldwin, Ron Kind, Gwen Moore and David Obey and GOP Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Mark Green, who is running for Governor.  Voting “yes” were GOP Reps Paul Ryan and Tom Petri.  The measure passed 216-207. 

Another vote (213-216) on May 3 was for substituting that virtually meaningless bill with a stronger version.  Voting “yes” were Baldwin, Kind, Moore, Obey and Green.  Voting “no” were Ryan, Sensenbrenner and Petri. 

The vote (217-213) on the final bill occurred the same day.  Voting “yes” were Ryan and Petri.  Voting “no” was the rest of the House delegation.  Particular praise for Sensenbrenner and Green for bucking House GOP leadership.”

Let’s dissect the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s analysis: 

The Journal Sentinel claimed that in the first vote, a “no” was a vote for stricter rules.  That was true of the Democrats who voted against the weaker version which passed with the Republican Majority voting “yes” so that they wouldn’t have strong rules governing their behavior.  However, it certainly did not include Rep. Sensenbrenner who clearly voted NOT for stricter rules, but rather because he didn’t want any rules at all.  That should have been logically understood by the results of the second vote, when Sensenbrenner voted against the stronger version which would have replaced the “virtually meaningless bill” which Sensenbrenner also voted against.  If Sensenbrenner truly wanted stronger ethics reform in the House, he would have voted “yes” on the second vote. Had he and one other congressman voted “yes” on the second vote then stronger ethics reform would have passed.  Neither Ryan, Sensenbrenner nor Petri were willing to do so. 

Mark Green voted “no” on the first vote, not because he wanted stronger ethics enforcement, which is clearly evident by the way that he has consistently ignored ethics rules in our Wisconsin State Legislature, and in how he takes illegal campaign money from people like Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, but because he is running for Governor.  His voting “yes” on the second vote was also because he is running for Governor, but the vote didn’t pass, so it didn’t matter. 

As for voting for higher charter fees rather than first class fees, Sensenbrenner doesn’t care that other Congressmen pay higher fees for their travel, he doesn’t pay for his travel to begin with.  His costs are paid for by lobbyists so a bill dictating higher fees doesn’t affect him, but it does make him appear to be more “ethical” to those who aren’t paying attention. 

There is no praise that should be extended to Sensenbrenner or Green for their votes – only a clear recognition of their campaign posturing from those who have the intelligence to recognize the difference. 

Praise should be given to those who are courageous enough to do what is right all the time, regardless of the position of their party.  It should not be given to those who only occasionally take a stance when they know that a bill will pass without their support, and they can look good for the press for faking a stance “on principle.” 

Did this article intentionally mislead you regarding how Reps. Sensenbrenner and Green voted and why?  Or did the Journal Sentinel Editorial board just not recognize the difference in how and why Democrats voted against the first bill, and why Rep. Sensenbrenner did so, yet voted against a stronger ethics legislation? Or why Mark Green voted as he did?  You be the judge.

 “I’d like to make a statement which you don’t need to comment on, and then I would like to ask some questions which I will ask you to answer.

I’ve previously told other Town Hall audiences of the fact that many Skin Head and Ku Klux Klan groups around the country are rallying around your anti-immigrant legislation, and that there had been a marked increase in violent acts against immigrants, while hate crime legislation has not been invoked in prosecuting the perpetrators of these crimes.  Your proposed legislation is stirring up a division in this country and increasing hate crimes across the country, yet you have refused to speak out against those actions and the groups and individuals who are committing those crimes.

In your latest “newsletter” propaganda piece, you have in the questionnaire portion, a question asking “Would you support a law protecting grieving family members from anti-war protestors while attending the funeral of an American soldier?”

You know that that question is a lie because the protestors are not anti-war at all.  They are far right lunatics led by the Rev. Fred W. Phelps Sr. and his Westboro Baptist Church out of Topeka, Kansas who are anti-gay and claim that God is striking down America and our soldiers because in his words “America tolerates Gays”.  That isn’t an anti-war message.  It is the message of right wing lunatics.   And you have falsely attributed those actions to anti-war protestors who want this war and the killing to stop.

In an earlier Town Hall meeting I asked you why it was that the Medicare Prescription Part D Legislation did very little to help the senior citizens with their high costs of prescription drug care, and instead gave hundreds of billions of dollars to the Pharmaceutical Drug Companies.  Your response at that time was that “That’s the way it works.”  You claimed that by giving the drug companies the money, that that would somehow indirectly result in help to seniors and patients who need help with their medication costs.  Yet, in a Town Hall meeting in Glendale on April 29th, you stated that “The thing is that Medicare Part D gives at least four hundred billion dollars of help to senior citizens!”

Now, you know that that is not true, and I know that that is not true, so I feel that you should either back up that statement with proof that that money is indeed going directly to senior citizens, and not to the drug companies, or you should publicly retract that statement.  You also did not recuse yourself from the votes on that legislation, even though the bulk of your stock holdings are in the Pharmaceutical Drug companies who benefited from the legislation which you voted for.

You voted against aid for the Katrina victims, Americans, because you claimed that there weren’t enough accounting safeguards put in place to avoid misappropriations and outright theft. Yet you voted time and time again to fund the “rebuilding of Iraq” a quagmire which is now approaching half a trillion dollars, and has lasted longer than the U.S. involvement in World War II, without any accounting safeguards from contractors and a foreign government which barely has any infrastructure at all, with billions of dollars in no bid contracts going to Halliburton, which you hold stock in.

I’ve also asked you on at least seven separate occasions to investigate the use of Depleted Uranium munitions on the part of the U.S. military, and get them to stop using it because of the overwhelming scientific evidence from experts around the world who have publicly testified to the toxic effects and the dangers to anyone exposed to it.  In initial discussions, you’ve either claimed that

1) “the question is why Saddam Hussein had possession of Depleted Uranium munitions.”  Anyone who knows anything about DU weapons knows that they were developed by the United States and Britain and that Saddam Hussein didn’t have them.

2) You claimed you didn’t know anything about it and would look into it, or hadn’t had enough time to get the information because you’d only had a couple of months to work on it (this was in late 2004 and early 2005 when I had first brought this to your attention.  But in fact, you already were aware of it by that time because Congressman Jim McDermott (D – Washington), had by that time already submitted two bills in the House starting in March of 2003, with HR 1483, which was delayed in committee, and then had to be resubmitted again in May of 2005 HR 2410, and he had contacted every member of Congress to let them know about this bill.  Yet you acted like you didn’t know anything about it.  It was again submitted as HR 5122, section 716, which finally passed on May 11th of this year.

3) You’ve also claimed on various occasions that DU was classified as a matter of National Security, yet there is plenty of documentation on it that has been released by various scientific and medical groups who have been studying DU for over 15 years now, and is freely available over the internet through groups like Physicians for Social Responsibility (Dr. Helen Caldicott’s group), miltoxproj.org , http://traprockpeace.org/depleteduranium.html , Leuren Moret, a geoscientist who worked at two U.S. Nuclear Weapons laboratories and turned whistleblower, and Dr. Doug Rokke, the Pentagon’s top expert on Depleted Uranium munitions who had been interviewed and testified on numerous occasions as to the hazards of Depleted Uranium which has caused 250,000 soldiers from the first Gulf war to become completely and permanently disabled, 15,000 soldiers to die, and over 425,000 soldiers to become ill, out of the 697,000 who served for three weeks in Iraq and were exposed to anywhere from 350-800 Tons of DU.

We now have over 1,000,000 soldiers and 24,000,000 Iraqi civilians who have been exposed to more than 2200 tons of DU during this war, and they have served for as long as three tours of duty and some are entering their fourth tour.  Over a year each tour, with no protection.

You claimed that “the Department of Defense claimed that DU saves lives and is safe”, and that that was your “final word on the matter” so I ask the members of this audience to look at these pictures and tell you whether they believe that DU is safe and whether or not you and the Department of Defense are telling them the truth.  Genocide and Mass Murder of not only millions of Iraqis, but of our own military being put on the ground, and their spouses and children, are being affected by this, and yet you do nothing.  (At this point, I take out pictures that have been posted online by doctors who have been treating the victims of Depleted Uranium radiation poisoning.  I hold them up and show them to the audience and at Sensenbrenner and ask them if they believe that these children have not been affected by DU and ask them again if they really believe Sensenbrenner and the Department of Defense when they tell them that DU is safe.  Gasps from the crowd.  Sensenbrenner doesn’t say a word.  I pass them to members of the audience and ask them to pass them along so everyone can see them.  You can see them at: http://www.barremore.net/depleted-uranium-kills.html )

(Jim Ott, the former weatherman who is running for Curt Gielow’s seat as a Republican, is sitting behind me.  I find out later, that Jim Ott, with the assistance of the other Republican plants in the audience, has gathered up the pictures, and placed them face down underneath his seat so that no one further away from me has an opportunity to view the pictures!!!  What does he hope to gain by covering up the fact that this government is hiding the fact that DU is killing children, not just Iraqis, but U.S. Military children because of the damage to their DNA!!!???  Would a moral, God fearing Christian person who cares about children, intentionally hide evidence of a crime against them?  Ask him yourself, the next time you have a chance, why he hid the pictures from the view of the rest of the people in the audience.)

I’ve been a constituent of yours for almost as long as you have been in politics.  Yet, I’ve never felt that you have ever spoken for me, stood up for me, nor did the right thing in my interests or in the interests of the majority of the people of your district. You’ve managed time and time again, with your political ties and your financial influence, to pull the wool over the majority of this District’s voters’ eyes to get them to vote for you and your policies, which hurt them economically and in the view of the majority of the world’s opinion of these United States.  Your tirades and outbursts in Congress are a continual source of embarrassment for many of us, and your continual support of this current administration’s policies while breaking over 750 laws, without so much as a question, let alone a Grand Jury Investigation which would put Bush, Cheney and the rest of his administration under oath.

On previous occasions, I’ve asked a number of different questions about a number of different issues as I’ve outlined earlier, and while we may both disagree on the merits of the issues, as you’ve stated time and time again in support of your anti-immigrant legislation, “It is important to start the discussion.”  I would agree that that is the case, but I would submit to you and to this audience that it is important for all parties to be involved in all of the discussions, and not to just pick and choose depending on what is politically advantageous, and avoid what is politically embarrassing.

Now I ask you.

1. When are you going to take a stand against the hate that you yourself are inciting with your rhetoric, and denounce the Skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan who are helping to push your agenda, as well as suspending the lies and innuendo which you are using to promote your proposed legislation?  (Sensenbrenner claims that he is against any violent acts, but won’t denounce what the Skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan are doing.)
2. Will you publicly retract your attribution of these soldiers’ funeral protests to the anti-war protestors and do so to the same extent that you disseminated the lies in the first place, and pay for it with your campaign dollars rather than with taxpayer dollars as it was originally disseminated?  (Sensenbrenner refuses to answer this.)
3. Will you recuse yourself from voting on any issues relating to bills which you will personally gain from financially? (on matters of Pharmaceutical Company assistance, or funding of the War). (Sensenbrenner refuses to answer this.)
4. Finally, will you demand that the DoD follow through with the medical tests and treatment that our troops deserve for serving this country as was asked of them, in spite of the lies that were given to send them into this war in the first place?  (Sensenbrenner refuses to answer this.)   

I’ve asked these questions before on several occasions and you have not answered them, so I would like for you to answer them now, instead of just blowing them off and avoiding them as usual.”

Sensenbrenner moves on without missing a beat.  Ignoring what he chooses to.  Classic Senselessbrenner.

Do you think he cares about our troops, or their spouses, or their children?

Think about this every time you hear about one of them who dies young and mysteriously from some illness that goes unexplained.

Think about this every time you hear about a child who is born with horrendous birth defects and at least one of their parents served in the military.

Then ask yourself if Sensenbrenner is a Patriot.

Ask yourself if any Republican who covers this up is a Patriot.

Ask yourself if you are doing enough to get your friends, neighbors, relatives and representatives in any political office to give a damn about what is happening.

Then ask yourself what would happen, and how you would feel, if it happened to you.

He says that with the exception of a bill that supports Veterans, “he has voted against all appropriations bills that the House passed this year, because they are laden with pork.” Note that he voted FOR most of them before. Perhaps he is only voting against them now because he is finding so many lifelong Republicans opposed to his votes and positions on so many policies?  Note also the fact that the House PASSED these bills, and while he may have voted against them, they would have passed anyhow with or without his vote, and in most cases, he didn’t bother to even stand up to speak out against them with the arguments that he gives you in his propaganda pieces.

What is the point of him saying to you that he is against wasteful spending, when he refuses to stand up to fellow members of Congress to speak out against their wasteful spending and to refute their arguments for it? I believe that he is only posturing to make it appear to voters that he is taking a principled stand while doing nothing at the Congressional level.

A case in point is the recent House action in supporting drilling in ANWR. Rep. Senselessbrenner has time and time again told crowds at his Town Hall meetings that he is against drilling because, “the oil wouldn’t be shipped east of the Rockies, but would go to Japan instead because the oil companies can get more money for it there.” Note that he doesn’t say anything about the oil going to China, which is actually our biggest competitor in the consumption of oil, where most of our industries and jobs are being outsourced to.

He has also stated that the reduction in gas prices would be far less than what the proponents of drilling in ANWR tell us. Yet during the House debates, shown live on C-Span, the argument from the Republican Majority was that drilling would give us less dependence on foreign oil and would reduce our gasoline prices by $0.30-0.40 per gallon across the country — all in direct contradiction to Rep. Senselessbrenner’s position in Town Hall meetings. Did Congressman Senselessbrenner speak up? Did he point out the fact that all the studies show that these lies being presented as facts were incorrect? All he had to do was to stand up and say something, or even lobby from behind the scenes and get members of his own party to vote against this fraud. But no, Senselessbrenner did nothing.

Not a peep. Not a word. No statement to the contrary, on the floor of the House or to the media.

These would have been “the right things to do,” as the Congressman is so quick to say whenever he wants credit for doing what he is supposed to be doing, but fails when he should be taking a principled stand on an issue. No, he only votes against something “because it is the right thing to do” when he knows it doesn’t have a chance in Hell of being defeated, even though he won’t stand up and speak out or fight against it.

But he’ll take away your right to vote, and he’ll make millions of immigrants felons overnight just because they are so desperate for a better life that they are willing to break the law to get into the country; just because they don’t have tens of thousands of dollars and a job waiting for them in the U.S., or can wait 12 to 20 years, to be granted a visa, a green card or citizenship. And he’ll make millions of good Samaritans, clergy, medical personnel, and educators felons if they dare to help working immigrants in any way as well. Whatever happened to “because it’s the right thing to do”?

He claims that he co-sponsored legislation to modify House rules to show the public exactly what Congress spends on individual projects in each district, attribute each earmark to its sponsoring Members of Congress, and require a demonstration that the funding has gone through a proper vetting process. What about all the bills granting funding that isn’t an earmark? (Given that the Republicans have been in control of the House since 1994, it’s about time that they took this action, but I doubt that it will be enforced. After all, look how many times President Bush and his Administration have broken the law and Rep. Sensenbrenner, as head of the Judiciary Committee, has failed to even bring up the subject, let alone start an investigation.)

He goes on to say that “Additionally, for those wasteful projects that will slip through, I support reinstating the line-item veto to give Presidents the power to eliminate wasteful projects one-by-one.” On the surface it’s not much of a threat. President Bush has failed to veto ANY legislation during his entire time in office. Ah, but giving him line-item veto would give him the power to further slash funding of health care initiatives, education, or enforcement of laws that are on the books by cutting the funding for the departments responsible for doing so. It’s a good idea if you have someone in office with a brain, but in this case, all it does is give more power to the executive, with the Congress sitting back and allowing it all to happen without oversight, or requiring line by line veto overrides. This is especially dangerous when you have a Congress of the same party as the President when they refuse to stand up to his idiotic policies but instead march in lockstep to his drumming. This is also in direct opposition to what the Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are trying to do to eliminate Governor Doyle’s authority to a line item veto. I guess it is only a good idea when they have “their” guy in office.

Senselessbrenner goes on to tout his “Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act (HR 4437)”, which claims to protect us by building a wall along the Mexico – U.S. Border. Note that he strategically placed “Anti-Terrorism” in the title, as if terrorists were streaming across the border with Mexico. In fact, none of the terrorists who have attacked us came across the border with Mexico. They all came across the border with CANADA. Yet, does he propose building a wall across the entire border of Canada and the U.S.? Nooooooooo! And is it really all that difficult to find an Arab terrorist in a sea of Caucasians?

The border between the U.S. and Mexico, by the way, is 1,951 miles long (according to the International Boundary and Water Commission IBWC), spanning four states, and has twenty commercial crossings, with 350 million people legally crossing every year.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm

“Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Duncan Hunter proposed building two parallel steel and wire fences running from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Coast. Hunter called for building a reinforced, two-layer 15' fence, separated by a 100-yard gap, along the entire length of the US border with Mexico. It would include additional physical barriers, powerful lighting and sensors to detect illegal border crossers. Some envision a wall or a fence. Others foresee a "virtual" fence of cameras, lighting, and sensors along the US-Mexican border.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said a wall running the length of a border would cost too much. A 2,000 mile state-of-the-art border fence has been estimated to cost between four and eight billion dollars. Costs for a wall that would run the entire length of the border might be as low as $851 million for a standard 10-foot prison chain link fence topped by razor wire. For another $362 million, the fence could be electrified. A larger 12-foot tall, two-foot-thick concrete wall painted on both sides would run about $2 billion. Initially it was estimated that the San Diego fence would cost $14 million — about $1 million a mile. The first 11 miles of the fence eventually cost $42 million — $3.8 million per mile, and the last 3.5 miles may cost even more since they cover more difficult terrain. An additional $35 million to complete the final 3.5 miles was approved in 2005 by the Department of Homeland Security — $10 million per mile.”

Figure in the higher costs of gasoline, in running the equipment and sending the crews out to build this “Great Wall of Mexico”, and you could probably end up more than doubling these initial estimates. When asked in one of his recent Town Hall meetings what the estimates were to build this wall which Senselessbrenner includes in HR 4437, which he authored – HE COULDN’T PROVIDE A FIGURE. He is proposing and fighting for passage of a bill, which he wrote, when he has no idea what it will cost!!! Talk about irresponsible and WASTEFUL SPENDING!

In contrast the border between the U.S. and Canada runs 5,525 miles (also according to the IBWC). And it isn’t all land based. Much of it is along the Great Lakes, so private boaters are expected to use an “honor system” to check themselves in. About 4,000 miles is land based and the remainder is on water.

Note that Senselessbrenner opposed building or reinforcing the levees in New Orleans, a strategic port responsible for shipping and processing one third of all the oil that comes into the United States. And Senselessbrenner opposed giving funding to help the victims of the Katrina disaster and the victims of the Bush Administration’s incompetence after that. He claims that he did so because there wasn’t enough accounting oversight of the funds being dispersed.

Too bad that he didn’t take that into consideration when he voted for funding the War in Iraq, which has had NO accounting oversight, NO reporting to congress, and NO one held accountable in this race to spend as much taxpayer money as possible to give freebies and cost overruns to contractors and put them up in fancy hotels and palaces, while our troops get to live on cots, and eat rotten food doled out by Halliburton and their subsidiaries. It has cost the American Taxpayers almost half a TRILLION dollars at this point, with no end in sight, but then Senselessbrenner OWNS HALLIBURTON STOCK, and gets campaign contributions from them as well. What was that he said about proper accounting and oversight?

But Senselessbrenner fails to deal with Terrorism in his bill because all of the terrorists gained entry into the United States LEGALLY. They all had valid Visas, and Passports, most of which were rubber stamped by the U.S. State Department, by bureaucrats who were put in place over twenty years ago, when Reagan and Bush 1 were calling the shots. Fifteen terrorists came through Saudi Arabia, a known terrorist supporting country (if you can call it a country – it is really owned by the Royal Family, so it is in reality a Kingdom). And members of the Royal Family fund schools which teach anti-American extremism. But because of the Bush family’s intimate relationship with the Saudis, none of the papers or the terrorists requesting passports and Visas were vetted and given background checks. This is in variance with citizens from all other countries wishing to come into the United States. And this wasn’t just from the Saudi’s side, because the U.S. side didn’t bother to do any background checks either. There was no coordination of intelligence databases to do background checks on any of the terrorists, coming through legal channels. As a result, they all had valid passports and visas and because of that, they were able to get valid driver’s licenses.

Senselessbrenner’s Immigration bill fails to deal with fixing the problems at the State Department and with the Intelligence Community that allowed the terrorists to get into the United States in the first place, just as his Real ID bill ignored the fact that terrorists got valid Driver’s licenses because they had valid passports and Visas.

He instead went after known illegal aliens, who were in fact, telling us who and where they were and how to contact them, by applying for and qualifying for legal drivers licenses. They could have at least applied for and received auto insurance then. Now, you just have illegal aliens who depend on counterfeit licenses in order to drive, so their names and addresses are often falsified, and they haven’t passed a driver’s test. And, they won’t get auto insurance.

So, the cost of resulting property damage and personal injuries isn’t being spread out either. Taxpayers get to foot the brunt of those expenses, for 11 to 12 million estimated aliens who used to pay a good portion of those expenses. Some deal.

In this latest propaganda piece he published his 2006 Annual Questionnaire, which as always provides leading questions and only limited answers to choose from. Anyone who has any statistical experience or knows how to create fair or unfair questionnaires recognizes that:

1) Statistics lie

2) Statistics can be manipulated to give you whatever result you want them to

3) Questionnaires and Polls can be worded in a way that directs you towards a response that doesn’t reflect your true feelings, so as to manipulate the results of the Questionnaire/Poll.

It is clear that Senselessbrenner knows this, and uses this to his best advantage in the wording of his questionnaires, so that he manipulates you into giving him the answers that he wants. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he just throws the results out. (That was clearly evident last year when he voted against the victims of the Katrina disaster, and publicly stated that he had only received comments from two people who disagreed with him on his vote, even though there were at least six people who went to his office and signed in to protest against his vote with the support of many who could not attend because his office hours are during the work day, in a public statement that was covered by local network camera crews, prior to his public statement.)

The first question asks “Should non-U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants be eligible to receive Social Security benefits?”

Seems simple enough. But then, why is he asking this now? In early 2005, the Congress could have done something about that issue, because earlier in the fall of 2004, President Bush signed the Social Security Totalization Agreement with Mexico, which takes $350 Billion out of Social Security, for illegal immigrants who HAVEN’T put money INTO Social Security in the first place! This occurred during the time that the Republican Party and President Bush were telling us that Social Security was in danger of going broke. A third of a TRILLION dollars was being earmarked by President Bush to go to illegal immigrants who hadn’t paid into Social Security, so that they could receive Social Security benefits, all in an attempt to score points with Mexican President Vincente Fox, and Hispanic voters. But did the Republican Controlled Congress step in to say that this was a boondoggle? Did they say that this was not fair to American workers to have their money given to foreign citizens who did not pay into the fund in the first place? No. They just sat there and never raised any significant opposition to this Agreement which was automatically approved by Congress due to lack of opposition to void it. And where was Congressman Senselessbrenner then? Did he stand up in opposition to a third of a Trillion dollars of earmarks to foreign citizens given away by President Bush? No. He sat silent.

But now, because Senselessbrenner wants to raise anger against immigrants, and support for his HR4437, he asks if you want to give Social Security benefits to non-U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants. The question is too little, too late, and for all the wrong reasons.

He also asks “Would you support a law protecting grieving family members from anti-war protesters while attending the funeral of an American soldier?”

This is an out and out lie and a total misrepresentation of what is happening. The truth about the protests at the funerals of American soldiers is that they are not anti-war at all. They aren’t anti-war protesters, they love the war, and they want more of it. In fact they belong to a right wing extremist religious group that believes that American soldiers are being killed “righteously” because America “tolerates gays”. These are Anti-Gay Church Protesters from a fundamentalist Kansas church, not anti-war protesters. The Indianapolis Star reported that the protestors are members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in Topeka, Kansas led by the Rev. Fred W. Phelps Sr. (This is the same guy that led the protests at the Matthew Shepard funeral, the gay man who was beaten to death in Laramie, WY in 1998.) Many of the members of this church are reportedly Phelp’s relatives. (Another good reason for making sure that people who are related to one another should not marry and have children.)

The “Church’s” website http://www.godhatesamerica.com/index.html shows that Phelps is blaming gay tolerant America for “floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, IEDs, collapsing mines and more”. And they are praying for more.

Senselessbrenner knows the difference between these two groups. What he is doing here is absolutely despicable, and he is promoting hate against anti-war protesters by attributing the acts of Anti-Gay Churches who support REPUBLICANS and their anti-gay agenda, to anti-war groups who are only trying to prevent the needless deaths of our soldiers and the destruction of our economy and our way of life, because Republicans are putting all of our resources into a poorly managed war which they continue to bungle, pour good money into for their fraudulent benefit, and lie about it to cover it up.

This is the same lie that Fox News’ Sean Hannity has been promoting, along with other Republican Talking Heads who do this to suppress the anti-war movement, and support the war that is making the war investors rich. Remember, Senselessbrenner owns Halliburton stock. He benefits financially by having this war go on FOREVER.

He also uses this Questionnaire to attack Governor Jim Doyle with this question.

“Federal transportation dollars are allocated to states with the goal of improving their roads and transportation infrastructure. Should Governor Doyle be allowed to divert money from these federal funds, as he has done in the past, to use on special projects of his choosing that are unrelated to transportation?”

It is interesting that during his Town Hall meetings, Senselessbrenner is quick to point out that State Senators are not allowed to speak out on issues of Federal matters (when they disagree with him), even though those Federal policies affect how the budget in the State is allocated. He regularly shouts down State Senator Lena Taylor when she speaks up. To her credit, she is not a shrinking violet and is quite willing to engage in a spirited debate with Senselessbrenner. It really is too bad, that most of the U.S. Senate and the rest of the Congress don’t have the same courage. It really isn’t difficult to beat Senselessbrenner on facts and issues. Democrats do have to work on being able to package their message however, by properly framing the debate first, in order to gain popular support. After that, it is just all about standing up to a blowhard bully who shouts louder than everyone else and rules by intimidation.

Yet, in his questionnaire, Senselessbrenner attacks how the Governor of this state, has used Federally allocated funds to balance the budget and pay off the $3.2 Billion in debts created under 16 years of Republican Governors Thompson and McCallum.

Balancing the Budget – now that is something that Republicans are incapable of doing on any level. Just look at how Bush has squandered several Trillion in surpluses to almost $9 Trillion in debt in just six short years.

God help us for the next two years. He’s going to pull out all the stops. He has nothing to lose because he isn’t running for re-election, and he won’t care about the Republican Congressmen who are disassociating themselves from him and his policies because they want to retain their seats for this election.

Senselessbrenner fails to recognize that it is the job of the executive in this state, to balance the budget every year, something that the President of the United States doesn’t have to do. In order to do that, it is often necessary to reallocate funds from areas where you have an excess, to areas where you have a deficit. That is basic to running ANY BUSINESS. But then, Senselessbrenner has never had to run any business in his life. He’s never held a job outside of politics since he graduated from the University, so he’s used to telling everyone else how to run their lives and run their businesses even though he has no experience in doing so.

But the issue probably runs deeper than that, since most of the companies doing road construction are owned and operated by Republicans and those contracts would be awarded by a Republican controlled legislature, so that the cost overruns could then be diverted in donations to Republican candidates for public office as has often occurred in the past.

That’s the real issue.

The one good thing that he did was to list his upcoming Town Hall Meetings in his mailing. He hasn’t bothered to update his website with them. Gee, I wonder why? Here they are for those of you who are interested in confronting Senselessbrenner with REAL issues, and demanding REAL answers.

Town Hall Meetings:

Sunday, June 25 7:00 p.m. Thiensville Village Hall

Sunday, July 2 7:00 p.m. Grafton Village Hall

Thursday, July 6 7:00 p.m. Hartford City Hall

Sunday, July 9 7:00 p.m. West Bend City Hall

Sunday, July 16 7:00 p.m. Brookfield Safety Building

Sunday, July 23 7:00 p.m. New Berlin City Hall

Sunday, July 30 7:00 p.m. Richfield Town Hall

Show up; Speak up; Ask him tough questions, and Hold him Accountable! Or, get stuck with him for another two years. Your choice. P.S. Bring along your video cameras so you can catch him on tape and he can't deny what he said. The media isn't doing their job. Perhaps you can show them how it's done.

Far from being the stiff-as-a-board politician, who listened far too much to his campaign advisors and not enough to his heart during the 2000 campaign, he comes across as a very polished, sincere, and well-informed spokesperson for the scientific community which hasn’t been able to get the truth behind their research into the main-stream media without fear of reprisals from corrupt corporations and politicians who benefit from your continued ignorance. (There is no disagreement in the scientific community on the facts, by the way. There is total consensus that Global Warming and its disastrous affects are a reality.) He also demonstrates his interest in the world community, something that corporations and the Bush Administration lapdogs couldn’t possibly demonstrate credibly. It was refreshing to see a former politician speak with such conviction and such intelligence. Both are such a rarity in today’s political environment.

The movie chronicles Al Gore’s struggle to get the evidence in front of political bodies and the world community, while having to defend against attacks on the science behind it, by right wingers who have no scientific training, but are paid to reframe Global Warming as a theory rather than a fact.

And it shows how fifty years worth of research have been painstakingly compiled and the dots have been connected to prove its contentions. He lays the facts out before you in a way that even a child could understand it. (Perhaps that is why the right wingers are so adamant that you not see it. Jeb Bush said that he was going to go to see X-Men instead. Yeah, that’s about his speed.)

Al Gore makes the case that it is our moral imperative to recognize the truth behind the science, and to start to take actions to reverse the course we are taking now, before it is too late. This isn’t a partisan issue. This is a human issue that anyone interested in survival should be concerned about.

He points out that overall the U.S. has overall vehicle fuel efficiency standards below 25 MPG, while every other civilized nation on earth has standards ranging from about 30-50 MPG. The U.S. can’t even sell cars to China, because we don’t meet their fuel efficiency standards. Automobile manufacturers are currently suing the state of California because California is trying to phase in imposed fuel efficiency standards, eleven years from now, that are already meet by China, as well as most of the developed countries in the world. It isn’t that we don’t have the technology to reduce fuel demands in order to remove us from dependency on foreign oil, it is that high oil prices are highly profitable to the oil companies, and they aren’t about to let go of their cash cow.

The evidence demonstrates that we have about ten years to reverse the course we are on, or the weather patterns will change so drastically that the environment that we are used to living in won’t be livable, or recognizable.

It isn’t that the earth will cease to exist. It will only change so drastically that humans will find it difficult, if not impossible to live on it any more. Nothing new there either. After all, the dinosaurs ceased to exist because they couldn’t adapt. We’ve been taught that it was their fault. They only had brains the size of a pea, after all. So, what’s our excuse?

This is a must see for any sentient being. Bring along anyone who is capable of recognizing cause and effect truths when they are laid out in front of them.

For those who can’t get out to see the movie but recognize that Global Warming is a fact and want to do something about it, there is a website you can go to so you can start taking action today. Go to: www.climatecrisis.net

And for those who are interested in getting large groups together to see the movie. It is currently showing at the

Oriental Theater in Milwaukee

2230 North Farwell Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53202
(414) 276-8711.

Call for group ticket sales at (866) 397-6339.

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Women?

Sensenbrenner held up the Passage of an earlier Amber Alert Bill (H.R. 412 was re submitted in early 2003, having languished and expired during the previous Congress) for over a year in the House Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. He claimed he had to hold it up to make the bill “more meaningful” by putting in harsher penalties for sex offenders. He claimed that those were his provisions, but they weren’t, they were Mr. George Gekas’ (R- PA) bill, which passed the House 409 to three on June 25, 2002. The integration of this provision affords judges the discretion to impose lifetime supervision against such offenders. These weren’t harsher penalties as Sensenbrenner claimed, just lifetime supervision that would continue to cost taxpayers money, but leave the offenders on the streets, instead of incarceration to keep them off the streets. But why hold up a bill that passed with such overwhelming support?

In October of 2002, the National Association of Police Organizations reported on the progress of the Amber Alert Bills.

AMBER ALERT LEGISLATION PASSES SENATE BUT FACES PROBLEM IN HOUSE

Note that Representative Sensenbrenner has long claimed that the delays for the Amber Alert legislation were in the Senate, even though he’d held up the original H.R. 412 bill for over a year before the original Senate version passed in the Senate in September 2002, and another House version was introduced in September (for that session of Congress). Sensenbrenner’s version wasn’t even submitted until October.

H.R 5422 also incorporated Rep. Sensenbrenner’s bill H.R. 4477, which passed the House on June 26, 2002, by a vote of 418 to eight. The sex terrorism industry obtains its victims through kidnapping and trafficking of women and children. These women and children are then forced into prostitution. This was supposed to impose more penalties on traffickers. But Sensenbrenner held up that bill to incorporate it into H.R. 5422. Why would Sensenbrenner hold up his own bill when it passed with such overwhelming support?

President Bush, by the way, waived any Saudi Trafficking Sanctions in September of 2005, in spite of their failure to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers in Saudi Arabia.

Even though Rep. Sensenbrenner controlled two bills that had passed overwhelmingly in the House, with one of them his own, he didn’t work to have those bills be developed in the Senate on their own merit. They were held back for three months in order to incorporate them into his own bill H.R. 5422, which was presented a month after Amber Alert Bills had already been presented in the House and the Senate.

But the Hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security by the House Judiciary Committee wasn’t held until the 107th Congress, Second Session on October 1, 2002. It was passed on 10/08/02. 390-24 with 17 not voting.

The Senate version S 121 passed three months later, on 1/21/03 92-0 with 8 not voting.

So why the delays and why would something like this be so controversial? Well as it turns out, the bill was held up even further because of sweeping sentencing changes which were placed into the final bill, even though those changes were not considered by any committee of either House. It was held up by Rep Sensenbrenner – I believe, because Sensenbrenner wanted to build up so much public outrage against the delays of putting this legislation through, (when it was originally only intended to give quick notice to the public by federal and state agencies so that children could be located in the vital first 72 hours when they were most vulnerable to being assaulted and killed), so that it could be forced through with changes that most members of Congress disagreed with or didn’t even know about until the vote. By then, anyone who voted against the Amber Alert Bill, as manipulated, would be publicly excoriated. What the changes did was to bar the right of judges to have any flexibility in sentencing.

‘When Chief Justice Rehnquist learned of this proposal, he wrote: “this legislation, if enacted, would do serious harm to the basic structure of the sentencing guideline system and would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and responsible sentences.” Justice Rehnquist is certainly no liberal. But even his concerns have been brushed aside.

Similar opposition was expressed by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the American Bar Association, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Washington Legal Foundation, the CATO Institute and many other groups and individuals. All to no avail.’

Statement of the Honorable William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts
Regarding the Conference Report on S. 151, the PROTECT Act of 2003

The combined House and Senate version of the Amber Alert Bill was signed into law on April 30, 2003. Very few voted against it. Unfortunately, the bill didn’t make it mandatory for all states to create an Amber Alert system. It only made funding available to those states which chose to do so and made it possible to network the various systems together.

The changes that were surreptitiously placed into the final Amber Alert bill were all related to issues that Representative Sensenbrenner was pushing for earlier, while competing with other bills which were more thoughtful and judicious, but held back in preference for his own.

But Sensenbrenner’s provisions haven’t accomplished much, prompting Florida and other states to write more comprehensive laws since then. But because of Sensenbrenner’s delays, how many children were sacrificed, in order for Sensenbrenner to take credit for these “improvements”?

Each year in the United States, between 1.3 and 1.8 million children are reported missing. These children may be kidnapped, lost, or runaways. Some are taken by a non-custodial parent. Still others disappear with few clues as to the reason.

Federal and state officials have no idea how many children are missing because they have not perfected reporting techniques that track the numbers of youngsters who have been abducted or have run away, a senior Bush administration official told United Press International.
The lack of accurate, up-to-date data is a result of law enforcement often waiting too long before taking a report from parents or other family members; poor classification of the missing or runaways in state clearinghouse computers; and the fact that federal authorities purge many missing children out of the federal missing people database once they reach age 18, whether they have been located or not.

The most recent figures — from 1999 — show that at that time, more than 750,000 children meeting law enforcement’s definition of missing or runaway had yet to be found.
“If skeletal remains turn up, there is no information because it’s been purged from the system” John Rabun vice president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Children?

Sensenbrenner is against a federal, comprehensive healthcare program that would largely eliminate one of the biggest expenses for businesses, especially small businesses, by providing coverage for catastrophic illnesses that are the cause of one third of all bankruptcies.

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Small Businesses?

Sensenbrenner pushed for the disastrous Medicare Part D Prescription Drug bill that rewards Drug Companies and the Health Care Industry with hundreds of Billions of dollars, by making it illegal for the U.S. Government to negotiate lower prescription drug prices by the HHS Secretary, while cutting off needy Americans from their medication. These are companies that he owns stock in and who regularly donate hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to him, even when his campaigns were uncontested.

Almost two years ago, while waiting for the doors to be opened for a Town hall meeting in Germantown, a young family approached Representative Sensenbrenner to tell him that they had traveled to Washington D.C. to see him at his offices there, only to be told that he had cancelled their meeting, without giving them any advanced notice. They wanted to speak to the Congressman, to plead for his help because of their dying infant daughter. He told them that he would take their questions during the Town hall meeting.

After the meeting started Sensenbrenner took a few questions, then getting to the young mother, who informed Sensenbrenner that their daughter was dying and that doctors told them that her only hope was stem cell research that had been banned because of President Bush’s policies. They begged him to speak to President Bush and appeal to him to allow research to continue. Rep Sensenbrenner told them very bluntly that that was the current policy of the United States and President Bush and he couldn’t do anything about it. He then said that perhaps with a different administration in a few years that policy might change. She responded to him that her daughter “didn’t have that much time to wait”. Sensenbrenner ignored her response, then blew her off and called the next questioner.

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Sick People?

And more importantly – Why Does Sensenbrenner Love Drug Companies? (Maybe it has something to do with his wallet?)

Sensenbrenner tells Americans to use Health Savings Accounts, which are completely funded by the individual’s own savings, with no assistance from any other source.

If you don’t have any savings, you aren’t covered.
If you use up the money in your savings, you aren’t covered.

“In 2003, working Americans with employer-provided health insurance programs saw their premiums increase by nearly 14 percent. It’s no wonder, combined with the increase in unemployment, that more than 40 percent of the 1.4 million newly uninsured in 2004 were middle class.”

• In 2003, more than 90 percent of the 1.6 million American families that filed for bankruptcy were middle-class–more than half named job loss, a health emergency, or divorce as the reason for filing.
Related Survey Results: The Middle Class
Middle-class Americans are literally getting sick over the high cost of healthcare. In 2003, 40 percent of the newly uninsured were “middle class,” and those fortunate enough to have private or employer provided coverage health insurance saw their premiums rise by nearly 14 percent. Today, it’s not just low-income and poor Americans that are finding it difficult to afford quality healthcare for their families; increasingly, the American middle class are becoming the American uninsured as well.
• Senior citizens aren’t the only ones suffering from a lack of health insurance. One in four families with incomes between $55,980 and $74,040 didn’t have health insurance between 2002 and 2003. In fact, there are 18 million middle-age, moderate and high-income Americans without health insurance.
• Nearly 74 percent of the uninsured reside in households with at least one full-time employed adult; and almost two-thirds of the uninsured are, themselves, employed.
Concern about the rising cost of prescription drugs isn’t limited to the elderly – it’s coming between middle-class Americans and their health.
Last updated: June 25, 2004
Related Survey Results: The Middle Class
Yet Sensenbrenner, himself, gets 100% health coverage at no cost to himself, completely funded by you the American Taxpayer. He thinks that you should be responsible for your own health care expenses while he bills YOU for his. All that in spite of the fact that Healthcare costs are consistently polled as being the number one financial issue facing families today.

• When asked “what is the most important financial problem facing your family today,” Americans ranked “lack of money/low wages” number 2 – second only to “health care costs.”
• 74% of Americans believe that the health care system is not meeting the needs of “most Americans.”
• 69% of Americans would be willing to “pay more in federal taxes every year to assure every American receives health care coverage.”
• 54% of Americans believe that “when it comes to economic policy, our first priority should be investing in education, health care, and energy independence.”
Survey Results: The Middle Class
Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Middle-Class Americans, who are begging for Healthcare assistance?

While Sensenbrenner made a trip to China to see how the Chinese have stolen American Technology and Intellectual Property Rights (Theft of IPR are at epidemic levels.). The Chinese are using it to build copycat automobiles which compete against American Automobile manufacturers, and he complained about how it hurt American companies.
But he voted FOR NAFTA (H.R. 3450, Roll #575),
he voted FOR U.S.- Singapore Free Trade Agreement (H.R. 2739, Roll #432),
he voted FOR U.S.- Chile Free Trade Agreement (H.R. 2738, Roll #436),
he voted FOR U.S.- Morocco Free Trade Agreement (H.R. 4842, Roll #413),
and he voted FOR U.S.- Africa / Caribbean Free Trade Agreement (H.R. 434, Roll #145).

He helped to create the outflow of high paying manufacturing jobs. He helped to create the outsourcing problem that we have lost millions of jobs as a result of.

In 2004, Sensenbrenner’s Judiciary Committee even submitted a bill that would allow patent searches to be outsourced!

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate American Workers?

On at least five separate occasions, in Germantown, Cedarburg, Menomonee Falls, Glendale and Mequon Town Hall meetings, I’ve publicly asked Representative Sensenbrenner to investigate and demand that the United States Military stop using Depleted Uranium munitions that are in reality, not depleted at all. It is radioactive waste that disintegrates into the air upon impact and contaminates anyone who breathes the air that has been contaminated by it.

I’ve asked why the U.S. Military has refused to release documents that show that innocent people who are being exposed to this are dying from radiation induced cancers, and being born with genetic mutations because of the exposure. This isn’t limited to Iraqis, but includes our own military who aren’t being provided with proper protective gear, and when they return home, their children are being born with severe birth defects.

260,000 members of the military from the first Gulf War conflict are permanently disabled, with over 20,000 who have died because of “mysterious illnesses”. The Pentagon is denying our military the right to access medical treatment or even testing to determine exposure levels.

After numerous promises from Representative Sensenbrenner to “look into this”, after almost two years, he has to date, refused to respond.

More information on Depleted Uranium can be found here:

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3123
http://www.ericblumrich.com/pl_hi.html
http://traprockpeace.org/depleteduranium.html
http://www.yesmagazine.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate Our Military?

Sensenbrenner is against programs that are vitally important to all Americans – predominantly women and children, but which also affect family members who are affected by poorly crafted health problems and anyone who might be their dependents.

And I’m not the only one saying it. The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization at www.themiddleclass.org , ranks members of Congress based on how their votes affect American Middle Class Families, positively or negatively.

link and link here

Sensenbrenner’s grade for 2004, an election year, was an F. If he didn’t care enough about middle class families during an election year, why should he care when it isn’t an election year? Maybe it’s because most conservatives don’t bother to study the issues, and assume that any Republican will stand up for their middle class family values. Sensenbrenner’s voting record proves that he doesn’t. See for yourself.

Why Does Sensenbrenner Hate American Families?

Why do people stand for this continuous assault on American Families by Representative James Sensenbrenner? Why do people stand for the lies and propaganda which Rep. Sensenbrenner prints, at taxpayer expense, rather than spending the campaign contributions that he is overflowing with?

Write him or call him:

120 Bishops Way, Room 154
Brookfield, WI 53005-6294
Telephone: (262) 784-1111

Outside the Milwaukee Metro calling area, call toll-free HOTLINE number: 1-800-242-1119.
2449 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4905
Telephone: (202) 225-5101

e-mail address is sensenbrenner@mail.house.gov

Or why don’t you ask him in person?

Show up at one of his Town hall meetings that he schedules (sometimes during a workday when working people can’t attend, especially in areas that don’t completely support him).

Go here to find out when he’ll be in a Town hall near you.

Tell him what you think. Ask him hard questions. See what kind of compassion he shows you when he doesn’t agree with you. Maybe he’ll cut off your microphone and turn out the lights when he walks out, while he screams at you.

Then ask yourself: How does a Congressman lead when he won’t even listen to his constituents?

And when you finally get mad enough to do something about it, go to www.bk2006.org and volunteer or donate to Bryan Kennedy’s campaign to help defeat Senselessbrenner this fall!!

He claimed that this was in response to the 9/11 attacks. This was supposedly going to prevent a repeat of allowing illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers licenses which are commonly used by the U.S. Government as valid IDs.

However, the 9/11 hijackers weren't illegal immigrants, and they didn't use fraudulent Drivers Licenses. They got into the United States legally with valid Visas. 15 of the 19 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and because of that fact, none of them had to undergo any security checks, either from the Saudi Arabian side or from the U.S. side. They also acquired legal Drivers Licenses. The rubber stamp treatment, that allowed these terrorists to get into the United States without any background checks, was a gift from the U.S. State Department. The officials of the U.S. State Department that allowed this to happen were long time bureaucrats who were put into the State Department during the Reagan / Bush years in the 1980s.

None of the 9/11 attackers came across the border with Mexico. They, like the terrorists who attempted to bomb L.A. Airport, came across the border with Canada, but you don't see any demands for building a wall on the Canadian border, do you?

What Sensenbrenner isn't telling you is that the loop hole that allowed these terrorists to get in from Saudi Arabia was never addressed in his “fix”, because illegal immigrants weren't responsible for the attacks on 9/11. It was the incompetence of bureaucrats, and the white glove policies of our politicians, who demanded that our border defenses be let down for all Saudi citizens, who allowed it to happen in the first place. And it is the incompetence of politicians like Sensenbrenner who continue to allow these loopholes to remain in place, while they go after minorities, covering up their racist agenda with fake national security claims.

During one of his Town Hall meetings in Shorewood last year, Representative Sensenbrenner told a female Hispanic constituent that her comments wouldn't be heard because she wasn't from the 5th CD, and he only allowed constituents from his Congressional District to speak or ask questions during his Town Hall meetings. The crowd shouted at him to demand that he allow her to speak. She responded to his assumption that she wasn't from his C.D., by saying that she lived in Waukesha, and that the two hundred Hispanics who were bused into the Shorewood Town Hall meeting were also from Waukesha, at which time, he meekly surrendered the floor to her. It is clear that Representative Sensenbrenner believes that the only people who live in his District are white.

A similar Drivers License measure was proposed for the Wisconsin State legislature, which Representative James Sensenbrenner very publicly supported. The measure made it illegal for illegal immigrants to acquire a valid Drivers License in Wisconsin.

Far from making our roads safer, what this measure does, is to eliminate any process for the Wisconsin DOT to identify who the illegal immigrant drivers are, where they live, and whether or not they actually are qualified to hold a drivers license. And, if you don't hold a valid drivers license, you can't get insurance. All this measure succeeded in doing, was to force illegal immigrants to use fake drivers licenses, where no testing of driving qualifications are ever done, and no accurate driver information is collected, and no insurance can be acquired by the driver.

What that policy creates is more unqualified drivers, more fake information that can't be tracked back to a responsible party, and more uninsured drivers on the road.

The burden of these additional expenses is just shifted from illegal immigrants who were paying their own way, onto Wisconsin taxpayers.

Now Representative Sensenbrenner is going after illegal immigrants that are specifically coming into the United States through Mexico.

Do we have a problem with illegal immigrants coming through our Mexican border? Absolutely.

Do we have a problem with not having enough border security on our border with Mexico? Absolutely.

Do we have a problem with not having enough money or resources for our border protection in the first place? You betcha. Talk to Congress and President Bush and tell him to stop spending all that money in Iraq, and start spending it to protect our borders here at home.

So how do you deal with the problem of illegal immigrants?

Representative James Sensenbrenner is taking the approach of blaming the immigrants. But the reason they are here in the first place is because politicians and employers in the United States are willing to turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants because they can use them like slave labor.

They don't have to provide them with benefits, or withhold taxes, or pay them anything near what they pay American workers. In fact, if they do hire them, American companies face only a minor slap on the wrist when they claim that they didn't know that the people they hired were illegal immigrants, and just turn around and hire more illegal immigrants even on the same day they were caught and had to release illegal immigrant workers from employment. And in many cases, these companies withhold part of immigrant pay as if it was a tax withholding, knowing full well that because the workers are illegal immigrants, they will never file for the tax returns, and the corporations or small businesses just pocket the difference.

When these slave laborers are being used and abused by their employers and seek health care, food or housing, they often can only get it from a Good Samaritan. Under Sensenbrenner's bill, any assistance in helping that illegal immigrant would be a felony. So much for Christian compassion and loving thy neighbor.

Illegal immigrants are tolerated because their employers benefit from slave labor. Increasing the fines to make it more expensive than hiring legal employees, and give jail time to the employers and you will see illegal immigrant jobs disappear, and less incentive for illegal immigration.

Make it possible for immigrants to apply for citizenship without making it a lifelong struggle to do so, and provide them with fair benefits, while they are working towards their citizenship, and you wouldn't have to pay for such high enforcement costs to track down illegal immigrants, because more would take the legal path.

Instead of attempting to institute fair, intelligent processes to truly secure our borders and protect American jobs, Republicans prefer to blame immigrants for the effects of outsourcing and the abuses of employers who have no integrity.

Republicans are now locking horns with other Republicans on the immigration issue, because one side is trying to eliminate the illegal immigration to keep their constituents happy, because Republicans spent so much time blaming illegal immigrants for taking away American jobs. (They seem to forget that those illegal immigrants are taking the low paying labor jobs, not the high paying, high tech jobs that Republicans have no problem outsourcing to India and Communist China. But you'll never hear them talking about doing anything to keep THOSE jobs here.) The Republicans on the other side, support farming, manufacturing and other low paying labor interests, to help their big money supporters, like Wal-Mart, who don't want the endless supply of cheap labor to stop. I’ll give you one guess as to which side is going to win this battle.

There is no good side for Republicans on this issue, because both sides are fighting this battle to support racist policies. One is trying to make illegal immigrants the scapegoat for the lack of decent jobs in the United States, and the other is supporting slave labor for big business.

Republicans complain about the cost of education for immigrants and prefer to keep immigrants in ghettos and on welfare, rather than providing them with educational opportunities so that they can improve their lives and pay their own way.

And in denying immigrants in crowded ghettos affordable healthcare, they are ignoring a major National Security problem. This is a health disaster waiting to happen because there aren't enough people in those crowded areas who have access to health care. So when serious outbreaks could and absolutely need to be stopped at an early stage, prohibiting healthcare treatment to them would increase the chances of an outbreak. This isn't an immigrant issue. Sensenbrenner's approach has the potential for allowing runaway pandemics to get a foothold in areas which are the most vulnerable and least prepared to deal with these outbreaks, and once that happens, it will affect even those who are the most affluent, regardless of where you live.

President Bush, Representative Sensenbrenner and the Republican Party have no problem with asking or even demanding that non-U.S. citizens don a uniform for Uncle Sam and fight or even die for a country that they aren't even allowed to have basic human rights in. Now Sensenbrenner and his racist supporters want to make it illegal for someone to offer them a helping hand. How compassionate.

They want your cheap labor, when it is convenient for them, and afterwards they would prefer to just ship you back over the border. They say they might allow you to apply for citizenship if you stand at the back of the line, but as an illegal immigrant, you would be a felon and therefore, won't have any right to vote. Some citizenship. They want you to fight their wars for them, even though you aren't a citizen, but if you even ask for a chance for an education, healthcare or citizenship? God forbid anyone actually offer fair treatment to someone who wants a chance at freedom and liberty here in the United States where God, Freedom and Liberty are always touted as the biggest principles behind Conservative values.

No, Jesus himself would be turned away by the self-righteous wing, because he would be seen as a dirty, long haired, bare-foot hippie who does nothing but preach sedition.

“One of my most important responsibilities in Congress is to ensure that your taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. To fulfill that responsibility, I find myself voting against most appropriations bills in Congress. For the most part, my constituents understand my reasons for doing so – such as when I voted against last year’s bloated transportation bill that wasted taxpayer money on projects like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere’ in Alaska. But at other times, when it’s less obvious, my critics delight in taking shots at me while posing for holy pictures in the media. This is precisely what I encountered when I stood up with ten of my colleagues and voted ‘No’ on the $52 billion Hurricane Katrina emergency relief bill last September.

I was publicly lambasted for my vote, and referred to as “heartless”, “mean-spirited,” and in some cases, just plain “wrong.” Since then, through reports from the Government Accountability Office and the House Select Committee on Hurricane Katrina, we have learned the sad truth about how millions, and perhaps billions of your hard-earned tax dollars were misspent. Although the federal government has a critical role to play in situations like this, we must remember that compassion does not equate to dollars.”

Sensenbrenner justifies his vote against giving money to Hurricane Katrina victims because of the latest revelations that millions if not billions of dollars have been misspent for uses unrelated to helping Hurricane Katrina victims.

The agencies responsible for those misappropriations and incompetence have been realigned and staffed under Republican appointees by a majority Republican Congress and Administration.

Congressman Sensenbrenner appears to hope that observers will ignore the fact that as a member of Congress, he is just as responsible for making sure that the agencies of Homeland Security and FEMA are answerable to Congressional oversight to make sure that they are doing their job, and not just approving or denying funding for their activities.

Given the fact that Halliburton has been over billing the American taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars for goods and services that they have not supplied to our troops in harms way in Iraq, while feeding them rotten meat and polluted water for the past three years, you would think that he would have taken some action to make sure that Homeland Security and FEMA and Bush’s appointees as well as Bush himself, would be held to a higher standard of performance. Homeland Security since 9/11, after all, is supposed to be the number one priority of this country, isn’t it? Four years and forty Billion dollars were spent annually to “improve” our Homeland Security to make us more prepared to respond to the aftermath of disasters on the scale of 9/11. Instead, after the most catastrophic natural disaster, which was also the highest priority and most predictable one among the scientific community, the Bush administration responded with the greatest man-made disaster in our country’s history.

Congressman Sensenbrenner, rather than admit that he was denying victims the help they need, out of being “heartless”, “mean-spirited” or “just plain wrong”, claims he was justified in voting against the aid because he somehow anticipated that the Bush appointees and agencies under their control were going to misspend the money. He could have done something to fix the problem of bureaucrats and their appointees failing in their duties and responsibilities, or work to implement safeguards to make sure that the money was properly spent, but no, he just voted against providing the assistance and called it a day.

As Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, who has the power to bring charges against members of our government who have failed this country so miserably and so criminally in their responsibilities, he should be bringing charges against President Bush and members of his staff as well as those in Homeland Security and FEMA who were in charge of planning and executing a proper response to the Katrina disaster. He didn’t do that. Congressman Sensenbrenner should resign as Chair of the House Judiciary Committee for failure to do his duty because of his partisan bias.

Republicans were quick to point the finger of blame when 18 American soldiers died during the infamous “Blackhawk Down” battle in Mogadishu, Somalia and demand the resignation of then Secretary of Defense Les Aspin. Today, after more than 2,300 of our soldiers have been killed in the ill-planned War in Iraq, which has dragged on now for three long years (in spite of Cheney’s reassurances that it would last “weeks rather than months”, and Bush’s claim of “Mission Accomplished”), Bush supporters claim that such losses are acceptable.

Now, after hundreds of Americans have died on our own soil from the aftermath of a predicted and anticipated natural disaster, followed by more deaths because of the incompetence of this administration, Congressman Sensenbrenner claims he was justified in withholding assistance to millions of Americans who so desperately need it, because our government, which he is a part of, was incapable of spending the money legally and appropriately.

Congressman Sensenbrenner once again has demonstrated that not only does he not possess compassion; he also doesn’t possess the skills and common sense to appropriately safeguard taxpayer dollars while responding to the needs of Americans.

I’m thankful that the media have finally found the courage to report on issues that they’ve covered up for the Bush Administration in the past.

I’m thankful that NBC actually covered the fact that Fannie Mae had offered to provide 1500 Katrina survivor families housing worth $300,000 each, rent free for up to 18 months, but that not a single family was able to take advantage of the offer because FEMA had originally turned down the deal two months ago. After severe criticism when the deal became public, FEMA made an abrupt turn-around and agreed to accept the deal with Fannie Mae.

I’m thankful that Katrina survivors are being given an additional month to find suitable housing after originally being informed by FEMA that they would have two weeks to leave the hotels that are staying at before FEMA pulled their funding. Public outrage because of FEMA’s “Grinch” tactics forced them to readjust their policies and deal with Katrina survivors more humanely.

I’m thankful for the fact that Governor Doyle vetoed a Republican bill attempting to make carrying concealed handguns in churches, hospitals and schools legal in 2004. His veto was overridden by the Republican controlled State Senate, but failed by one vote in the Republican controlled State Assembly so the veto was upheld.

I’m thankful that the Democrats in Congress and across the country are investigating windfall profit schemes of the Oil Companies, whose executives were exempted from having to give sworn testimony in front of a Senate Committee hearing chaired by Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, over the objections of Democrats on the Committee thereby avoiding being brought up on perjury charges.

I’m thankful that Governor Doyle is questioning Oil Executives in Wisconsin to investigate windfall profit schemes, and that the combined efforts of Democrats in Congress and across the country, have caused the Oil Companies to drastically reduce the price of gasoline. Not that it will affect their profits any. They reported record profits last quarter, in spite of the fact that the reported reason they jacked up prices was because they claimed that there were reduced inventories as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

I’m thankful that the Bush Administration is busy trying to justify their rationale to go to war, claiming that their Weapons of Mass Destruction assertions were not a lie and that Congressmen and Senators had the same access to the same information when they voted for the war. It is a known fact that Vice President Cheney made personal visits to the CIA, and President Bush had his Presidential Daily Briefings (PDFs) that none of the rest of Congress had access to and that the CIA and other Intelligence Agencies around the world are going public to show that the Bush Administration “cherry picked” information that bolstered their claims and deleted more reasonable evidence that pointed to their falsehoods.

I’m thankful for the fact that in spite of the Bush Administration’s claims that this war in Iraq would not cost more than $50 Billion and that most of that cost would be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil (Paul Wolfowitz), that the statement that the war would cost closer to $100 to $200 Billion, by then National Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsay, who was fired for his candor, was closer to the truth, and demonstrates the unwillingness of this administration to consider views other than its own, stifling the truth along the way.

I’m thankful that the country is starting to realize that paying $6 billion a month toward an un-accounted-for war in Iraq, with hundreds of billions being siphoned off in fraudulent billing and payoffs to countries just to stay in the “coalition”, could go a long way toward providing education to our children, healthcare to all Americans, job security and Homeland Security in protecting our borders, instead of spending that and hundreds of thousands of lives of innocent civilians and thousands of our young soldiers.

NationalPriorities.org has a counter showing the money that has been spent on the war so far, and how much is now owed by each state, county and community across the country. Wisconsin’s share is over $3.68 Billion. Milwaukee’s is over $301, 643,000. Over $301 Million for a city that has over 50% minority unemployment and over 59% male minority unemployment. When ex-Governor Scott McCallum left office he left the state with over $2 Billion in debts, even after selling the Tobacco settlements for pennies on the dollar in order to reduce the debts by a pittance, but more likely to reduce the costs to the people who owned the Tobacco companies. Thank ex-Governor Tommy Thompson for giving tax rebates to the rich and depleting an over $500 million budget surplus, ignoring the need to “save for a rainy day.”

I’m thankful for the fact that the claims by the Bush Administration that the war in Iraq would take “weeks rather than months” by Vice President Dick Cheney have been proven to be disastrously poor judgment and that this administration has proven again that they are incompetent. Bush supporters denounced concerns by Democrats and military advisors who stated that any such action would be met with guerrilla fighting in the streets and result in a long term occupation, just as we continue to station troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea. Democrats urged Bush to move forward with due deliberation and a coalition of supporting nations, just as his father did during Operation Desert Storm. There was no coalition of any significance, and the fighting in Iraq has continued to be a guerilla war, far from “Mission Accomplished” as Bush stated. Now, top military generals admit that we could be in Iraq for a decade or more, just as was feared, even though that same argument was ridiculed by the Bush Administration and their supporters, who “knew better”. Now the Bush Administration are using that same argument to keep us there instead of acknowledging that it was a reason why we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

I’m thankful that then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki came forward to testify that the coalition forces would need hundreds of thousands of troops to keep the peace in Iraq for years after the initial bombing campaign, in spite of the fact that he knew that the Bush Administration would probably fire him, as they did, for not walking in lockstep with their assessments, which claimed that they wouldn’t need more than 50,000 troops. We’re currently at about 160,000 troops with another 10 percent of that number working as “independent contractors” in positions that would have normally been handled by military detachments, being paid at about 15 to 30 times the pay that the military get.

I’m thankful that more and more Americans are finally seeing that the war in Iraq is a quagmire, woefully mismanaged by the Bush Administration and that the $350 Billion dollars so far appropriated by the Congress for this insanity is nothing more than a down payment on Bush’s Money Pit, while draining this countries resources and ignoring the needs throughout our country.

I’m thankful that people around the world are finally recognizing that Bush had ignored countries like Iran and North Korea who actually have nuclear weapons in order to attack Iraq, which didn’t have nuclear weapons. But then again, Iraq has oil, and North Korea doesn’t.

I’m thankful for the fact that more and more Americans are finally recognizing that American soldiers are being used as pawns and manipulated by the Bush Administration to prop up a failed policy.

That far from “Supporting Our Troops” the Bush Administration is still not providing personal armor or armored vehicles for all of our troops as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly promised they would.

That far from “Supporting Our Troops” the Bush Administration is not providing basic insurance and healthcare for 80% of the National Guard deployed in Iraq.

That far from “Supporting Our Troops” the Bush Administration has cut funding for Veterans Benefits by $15 Billion over the next 10 years, and forces injured servicemen to pay for their meals while in the hospital, and forces them to pay for the cost of their trip home.

That far from “Supporting Our Troops” the Bush Administration has repeatedly issued stop loss orders to prevent the military who have served their time in the Military, as they have agreed to, and that the Bush Administration is reneging on its promises to allow them to go home after their tour of duty or their hyped “mission” was “accomplished”.

That far from “Supporting Our Troops” the Bush Administration is using Weapons of Mass Destruction themselves, contrary to the Geneva Convention. That they are using White Phosphorus incendiaries and Deplete Uranium munitions which has a half life of 4.5 Billion years and will kill anyone inhaling the particles long after this war is long forgotten, and is killing thousands of our own military as well as the civilian population exposed to it. 260,000 military are disabled from the first Gulf War from exposures lasting only about three weeks to 350 tons of Depleted Uranium dropped on Iraq. Our Government is exposing our soldiers to over 1500 tons of Depleted Uranium from this campaign without any protection, for as long as three tours of duty or about three years at this point, and refuses to provide medical treatment or even testing to those who now suffer from radiation poisoning.

That the Bush Administration denied 900 National Guardsmen their requests to go home because of hardship, when their homes were destroyed, and families displaced or left without a source of income when Hurricane Katrina hit. And that the main reason that the State of Louisiana was so poorly prepared for Hurricane Katrina was because 40% of their National Guardsmen and their equipment were deployed in Iraq and unavailable to respond.

I’m thankful that the Pentagon recently announced that it might be cutting troops in Iraq by three brigades by early 2006. I’m sure it is not so much because they plan on keeping them out of Iraq, but clearly their civilian masters are watching the polls and looking at the fact that the Republican Party faces a disaster in the 2006 mid term elections if they continue in failed policies – most notably Iraq.

It also shows that Bush, far from being a “stick-to-his-guns” and “committed” individual, is running for cover and listening to the polls that show his popularity dropping like a rock. That people in his administration are listening to the appeals from the Republican Congressmen who are no longer standing by his side in an effort to distance themselves from Bush prior to their bid for re-election, and looking for some small victory to point to in order to gain re-election, instead of only showing repeated failures for their Republican monopoly on the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Executive branch.

I’m thankful that we have the advantage of looking back on our history and seeing how John F. Kennedy, a REAL President, handled REAL threats of nuclear war, by using thoughtful, insightful, measured responses to avoid a disaster, instead of caving in to military and civilian advisors and critics, like then Congressman George H.W. Bush, who pushed him to attack Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs and during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Today, we have the knowledge that, at the time, unknown to our military and civilian leaders alike, Soviet submarines were shadowing Soviet freighters that were delivering nuclear weapons to Cuba during the naval blockade. Our leaders thought that these were the first missiles being delivered, but in fact there were missiles that were already in place and which could have been fired from Cuba, in addition to nuclear missiles that were on board the Soviet submarines. The Soviet sub commanders were not in contact with Moscow and would not have asked for permission to fire upon the United States. Had the United States attacked Cuba or the Soviet freighters, the sub commanders have stated that they would have fired upon major U.S. Cities and World War III would have started.

I’m thankful that Bush has only a 39% positive polling in Wisconsin and that more and more people in Wisconsin question his policies and those who support him.

I’m thankful that there are indictments of ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, DeLay’s aide Jack Abramoff, and Vice-President Cheney’s ex Chief of Staff I. Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, and an investigation on Senate Majority Leader, Senator Bill Frist for his insider trading on his family owned hospital funds, showing again and again the lack of moral superiority in the Republican Party.

I’m thankful that Bryan Kennedy is once again running against Congressman James Sensenbrenner. Congressman Sensenbrenner continues to show that he is out of touch with the needs of his constituents and the needs of the public who pay him to protect them. He voted against providing funding to Katrina survivors, and voted against giving combat pay back to our soldiers, after it had been taken away by the Bush Administration, and has repeatedly refused to take any action to protect our soldiers from exposures to Depleted Uranium munitions.

I’m looking forward to 2006 and hoping that intelligence, thoughtfulness and real compassion backed by fact rather than ideology will once again decide the direction of this city, this state and this country.

With cameras from Fox 6 and WISN 12 rolling, we walked in to Congressman Sensenbrenner’s office to tell him how appalled we were that he would choose this time to claim to be fiscally responsible. He didn’t do it during the Bush tax cuts, and he didn’t do it when he voted for Bush’s Energy Bill with its over 6,000 cases of ”pork” projects, but he did stand against providing immediate and significant help to hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast Survivors who’ve already suffered because of the Federal Government’s incompetence. While Congressman Sensenbrenner was not present at the time, we did deliver our statement to his aide, and provided him with a written copy as well.

This was our statement to him:

In the light of the poor Federal response in assisting the Gulf Coast Survivors, which has clearly delayed medical assistance and vitally needed food and water, causing additional unnecessary deaths, Congress stepped in to legislate assistance where Bush, Homeland Security and FEMA utterly failed.

The Katrina Relief Bill passed in the Senate 97-0, and in the House 410-11. You, Congressman Sensenbrenner were one of the 11 who voted against the bill.

You have been cited as claiming that the reason for your opposition was because there wasn’t enough oversight of the money being spent. While that, on the surface, may be a concern, considering FEMA has been so incompetent in its handling of this National Emergency so far, and is being given the responsibility for the distribution of these funds, isn’t it the responsibility of Congress to oversee the distribution of these funds? Why is it that you would block this aid to the survivors, and turn your back on them at this critical time when this funding is so desperately needed? This is unconscionable.

We are constituents of the 5th Congressional District, which you are supposed to represent, and we are appalled and ashamed that you would vote in our name, to hold back such critical funding to Americans, who are survivors of a government failure, in their time of need, when hundreds are dying and many more may very well end up with chronic diseases or death because of the widespread exposure to biological toxins on American soil. This is a National Disgrace of a Federal Responsibility, and Americans shouldn’t have to hold out a tin-cup and beg to Congressional Representatives that are supposed to represent them.

While the cameras taped the exchange, neither Channel 6 (FOX), nor WISN Channel 12 ran the footage during their 6:00 evening news.

If you believe that Congressman Sensenbrenner should be more representative of his constituents in making sure that PEOPLE come ahead of “Pork” projects, please take this around to anyone in your community and get them to sign it and send it on to Congressman Sensenbrenner. Please send us a copy so that we can keep track of who you are, where you are and how many of you don’t care for Sensenbrenner’s priorities.

With cameras from Fox 6 and WISN 12 rolling, we walked in to Congressman Sensenbrenner’s office to tell him how appalled we were that he would choose this time to claim to be fiscally responsible. He didn’t do it during the Bush tax cuts, and he didn’t do it when he voted for Bush’s Energy Bill with its over 6,000 cases of ”pork” projects, but he did stand against providing immediate and significant help to hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast Survivors who’ve already suffered because of the Federal Government’s incompetence. While Congressman Sensenbrenner was not present at the time, we did deliver our statement to his aide, and provided him with a written copy as well.

This was our statement to him:

In the light of the poor Federal response in assisting the Gulf Coast Survivors, which has clearly delayed medical assistance and vitally needed food and water, causing additional unnecessary deaths, Congress stepped in to legislate assistance where Bush, Homeland Security and FEMA utterly failed.

The Katrina Relief Bill passed in the Senate 97-0, and in the House 410-11. You, Congressman Sensenbrenner were one of the 11 who voted against the bill.

You have been cited as claiming that the reason for your opposition was because there wasn’t enough oversight of the money being spent. While that, on the surface, may be a concern, considering FEMA has been so incompetent in its handling of this National Emergency so far, and is being given the responsibility for the distribution of these funds, isn’t it the responsibility of Congress to oversee the distribution of these funds? Why is it that you would block this aid to the survivors, and turn your back on them at this critical time when this funding is so desperately needed? This is unconscionable.

We are constituents of the 5th Congressional District, which you are supposed to represent, and we are appalled and ashamed that you would vote in our name, to hold back such critical funding to Americans, who are survivors of a government failure, in their time of need, when hundreds are dying and many more may very well end up with chronic diseases or death because of the widespread exposure to biological toxins on American soil. This is a National Disgrace of a Federal Responsibility, and Americans shouldn’t have to hold out a tin-cup and beg to Congressional Representatives that are supposed to represent them.

While the cameras taped the exchange, neither Channel 6 (FOX), nor WISN Channel 12 ran the footage during their 6:00 evening news.

If you believe that Congressman Sensenbrenner should be more representative of his constituents in making sure that PEOPLE come ahead of “Pork” projects, please take this around to anyone in your community and get them to sign it and send it on to Congressman Sensenbrenner. Please send us a copy so that we can keep track of who you are, where you are and how many of you don’t care for Sensenbrenner’s priorities.

One major difference between this vigil and others in the past year or two was, that of all the drivers coming past the group, there were only three that I saw during that entire time that were vocally in support of Bush. One drove by with a large campaign sign and a flag hanging out their window, cheering for Bush. Another claimed they supported our troops (we are in support of our troops, but apparently they believe that in order to support them, they have to send them to their deaths or dismemberment in a fraudulent war). The third drove by yelling “Yeaaaa, Iraq!”

Fortunately, the vast majority of the cars honked their horns repeatedly and gave us the thumbs up or a “V” peace sign while shouting their support of our vigil. The remainder that weren’t supportive of us, and were obviously supportive of Bush, wouldn’t even look at us, acting like we weren’t even there. No one flipped us off, yelled epithets or tried to run us over like they did in the past. Looks like the tide has turned and they know it.

The notification for this vigil went out on Monday, and between then and Wednesday, there were over 1,400 vigils organized and held in support of Sheehan across the country, all at the same time.

Some right wingers now claim that Cindy Sheehan is being used as a puppet by liberals, because liberals support her position. Of course, when right wingers latched onto Terry Schiavo, they denied that THEY were using Terry Schiavo. (They claimed that everyone has a right to live – regardless of the rights of the husband or the family, or whether the expenses incurred in taking heroic medical action were beyond the financial reach of the vast majority of Americans because Republicans have consistently denied access to health care for 43 million Americans).

I guess selling the list of Schiavo donors, by Response Unlimited, to direct marketing firms doesn’t count as her being used by right wing ideologues (as reported in the March 29, 2005 New York Times).

(Note: Terry Schiavo’s treatment over the past 15 years was made possible by a medical malpractice lawsuit which gave $1 million to her husband, $700,000 of which was placed into a trust to pay for Terry Schiavo’s healthcare. The Republicans in Congress, you may recall, have been pushing for limits on medical malpractice awards that would only give a maximum of $250,000. The legislation would prevent any family that wasn’t independently wealthy, including one like the Schiavo’s, from being able to provide the healthcare that had kept her alive for 15 years.)

Right wingers are also claiming that, because Cindy Sheehan had already met President Bush once, she didn’t have the right to meet with him again. I wonder what their reasoning was when they claimed that they had the right on behalf of Terry Shiavo to force 16 court actions – to have Governor Jeb Bush step in to block a court order allowing Schiavo’s husband to take her off life support; to pass a bill in the Florida House attempting to keep Terry Schiavo alive (which failed in the Florida Senate); to petition the Florida Supreme Court twice; to file three petitions of the U.S. Supreme Court; to spur legislative action by the U.S. Congress; to have President Bush come back to Washington, D.C., from a vacation in Crawford to speak to a special session of Congress and sign legislation; and to instigate numerous investigations that would become failed attempts to find evidence of attempted physical abuse or attempted murder.

Cindy Sheehan is trying to make an appeal to President Bush and the American Public to see if she can stop senseless deaths. President Bush isn’t listening. He claims he “just needs to get on with his life.” Besides, it would interrupt his vacation.

RIGHT TO LIFE AND DEATH TOLLS
Cindy Sheehan is not talking about just one innocent woman in a vegetative state.

She is talking about over 100,000 innocent Iraqis, men, women and children killed (if you believe the U.S. government figures. Sources in Iraq put the number at 200,000 Iraqis.) The US Government claims that they don’t keep an accurate count of enemy or civilian deaths.

She is talking about 1,867 American Military deaths that the U.S. Government is willing to acknowledge.

She is talking about 13,877 American Military wounded that our government is willing to acknowledge. Others estimate that number to be between 15,000 and 42,500.

Ten percent of the American presence in Iraq is civilian contractors doing work that the U.S. military would ordinarily do. Their numbers of dead and wounded aren’t being reported by the U.S. Government.

BUSH, NOT SHEEHAN, DAMAGED AMERICAN MORALE Right wing detractors claim that Cindy Sheehan and her supporters are not supporting the troops and hurting morale here at home, which puts our American military in danger.

I don’t know how military morale could be hurt more than to learn that the U.S. Commander-in-Chief lied to fight a fraudulent war that has lined his buddies’ pockets with oil and weapons manufacturing profits. The war in Iraq is a conflict that was supposed to last “weeks, rather than months” according to Vice-President Dick Cheney, but has now been expanded to a global “war that will not end in our lifetimes.” The later statement also came from Cheney.

I also don’t know how Sheehan’s critics can possibly come up with any figures to determine how Cindy’s questioning of the rationale for war (which is really Congress’s job, one they obviously didn’t do) had caused any deaths of our soldiers.

On the other hand, we do know that as of May 1, 2003, when Bush announced that all major combat operations were over and congratulated our troops on their “Mission Accomplished,” there were 139 fatalities from March 20 – May 1, 2003. There have been 1811 American Military deaths since that announcement.

On July 2, 2003, President Bush announced “Bring Them On” in a taunt to the enemy to attack our troops. Since then 1,651 American military troops have been killed.

I think there is far more evidence that Bush’s rash machismo and false bravado has caused more American deaths than anyone questioning the sanity of his policies. Remember, this president was an Air Force reservist who received $1 million in taxpayer financed training to fly fighter jets, then went AWOL and did not report for duty for the better part of a year and a half (1972-73).

After the vigil, at about 8:30, as the traffic dwindled and roadway lights along the boulevard were being turned off, we gathered at Veterans Park, near the Vietnam Vets Memorial. There were short statements made by Julie Enslow and George Martin of Peace Action, the coordinators of the event, and Mike and Penny Mykytka of Twin Lakes, Wis., whose son survived his tour in Iraq but died of cancer from exposure to toxic agents in the war after he returned. The Mykytkas had just returned from Crawford, where they had gone to support Sheehan on her vigil when they heard that federal officials were about to arrest her.

Peace Action’s Enslow commented on another mother, whose son returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and told his mother that he had killed women and children. She later found him in the garage. He had hung himself.

Maybe it’s time for our “leaders” in the Bush-Cheney Administration to show us how important the sacrifices they expect us to make are by making those same sacrifices themselves. We need to finally understand that if our “leaders” aren’t willing to make the same sacrifices that they expect of us, they do not have the courage, nobility, patriotism and love of country that those who have made those sacrifices have, and simply don’t deserve the privilege of “leading” us.

The owner of the house lives on a main thoroughfare into the city of Port Washington. You can’t miss the memorial. It’s an eye opener for those who haven’t grasped the concept of how many American lives have been lost in the war. We are up to over 1680 as of last week. Eighty of our soldiers, several from Wisconsin, were lost in May alone of this year.

We held our May vigil on the second Sunday in June. As we bowed our heads and took turns reading the names, the drivers of several cars passing by honked their car horns. We’re not sure why, but it didn’t appear to be in support of our vigil. We live in an area that is predominantly Republican. Several individuals driving by, as we were reading the names, shouted at us. One said, “I’m a Republican!”, as if that gave him a right to be disrespectful and announce that he couldn’t care less. Another yelled, “It’ll soon be 1700!”

This isn’t uncommon. It happens quite often. In fact, last fall, someone threatened to burn down my friend’s house. Someone else left a nasty note in her mailbox. Some have indicated that they felt that her shrine honoring the dead was disrespectful of the military. I guess that should tell you something about their thought processes.

But there have been some touching moments.

Some people have donated money to pay for the signs, candles and banners. Someone else, anonymously, leaves flowers in front of the shrine and, every few weeks, picks up the dead flowers and replaces them with fresh ones.

Another elderly couple wrote a note to my friend to let her know that they appreciated what she was doing and supported her efforts. The wife had passed away several weeks prior to the mailing of the note. The husband found the note while going through his wife’s personal effects after she had died. He wrote that she had meant to mail it, but had been in ill health. He stated that he also supported my friend’s efforts and wanted to make sure that his wife’s intention to mail the note was honored.

The shrine elicits many emotions for those who see it. Some look at it with derision and disrespect. Others mourn for the dead and wonder what their sacrifice was for. It’s interesting to see that those who talk about patriotism, liberty and freedom, are the ones who have the most disrespect for those who gave their lives to provide them with those privileges.