BUSH WATCH...ERNEST PARTRIDGE

Prices and Values

Too much and for too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values for the mere accumulation of material things. The Gross National Product .., if we judge the United States by that, counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonders in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts [the killer's] rifle and [the rapist's] knife and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not [include] the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America, except why we are proud that we are Americans.
 

This essay is adapted from the second section of my published paper, “In Search of Sustainable Values.”   Endnotes and references may be found with that paper, which is located at my personal website, “The Online Gadfly.” The third section is an extended analysis of the Price/Value distinction. Follow this link.

The GOP is Certain to Win in 2006 — Unless...

By Ernest Partridge

Posted July 29, 2005

I have frequently been accused of being hopelessly optimistic. Perhaps so: that’s what keeps me going.

But now, for those who thrive on gloom and doom – it's your turn.

Here’s the very bad news: the Democrats will almost certainly lose in 2006 and again in 2008.

Three essential reasons: (a) the GOP and the Bush junta simply cannot afford to lose, (b) they can prevent their defeat no matter what the voters have to say about it (as they have in the last three elections), and (c) apparently the Democratic Party, the media, and law enforcement are unable and/or unwilling to do anything about it.

A GOP win in 2006 and 2008 seems simply inevitable: as "inevitable" as LBJ’s re-election, Nixon completing his second term, and the endurance of the Soviet Union and apartheid South Africa. By this I mean that all this would have come to pass but for some extraordinary and unforeseen developments. Nothing less will budge the GOP from the White House and the Congress. After all, their “private sector” supporters count and compile the votes with secret software – and do so with no official independent means of validation. These facts about voting in the United States are publicly known and undisputed. And yet, despite compelling and unrefuted evidence of voting fraud, no one, except some determined citizen groups and a small minority of members of Congress, appear to be bothered enough to take action.


So the GOP will win for “three essential reasons.” Let’s take them in order:

1) The GOP and Bush, Inc. cannot afford to lose.

If the Democrats take control of just one house of Congress in 2006, they will gain the powers of Congressional investigation – the right to issue subpoenas to witnesses and for essential documents, and the right to require witnesses to testify under oath, which carries with it the threat of criminal conviction for perjury. And be assured, that should the Democrats take charge of congressional investigations, chaired by such prosecutorial hawks as Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, the worm-cans would be opened.

To be sure, Congressional Democrats have recently held unofficial hearings on the 2004 voting irregularities in Ohio, on The Downing Street Memos, on media reform, and on the Plame-Wilson-CIA scandal. But these have all been rather toothless affairs, boycotted by the Republicans, with all testimony volunteered and none under oath. Official Congressional investigations would be a whole ‘nother story.

For there is good reason to suspect that the Bush Administration is less a government than it is a crime syndicate, which, thanks to a compliant Congress and Justice Department, has to date done its dirty work without fear of investigation or prosecution. Among the possible crimes that are crying for investigation: war profiteering, Congressional bribery and corruption, election fraud, war crimes, and of course the “outing” of a covert CIA operation -- and act which Bush's own father described as treasonous.

Accordingly, the loss of either house of Congress would not merely send the Busheviks back into private life: it might send many of them straight to federal prison. And the prospects for the GOP malefactors would be still worse if the Democrats reclaimed the White House in 2008, and with it the criminal investigation and prosecution powers of the Justice Department.

Nor is the threat of criminal prosecution the only concern. In addition, with a Democratic victory, the GOP oligarchs would have to give back the keys to the federal candy store.  With a return to fiscal sanity, the super-wealthy might once again be required to pay a fair share of federal taxes. Legislation might be passed to cut back on corporate welfare, to further reform campaign financing, and to reduce the influence of the lobbyists. Furthermore, the corporate foxes would be chased out of the regulatory hen-houses – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, etc.-- thus restoring to these agencies their intended function of protecting the public interest.

In sum, from the point of view of the Republicans, continuing control of the Congress in 2006 and of the White House in 2008 is not simply “desirable” – it is absolutely mandatory.


2). The GOP can prevent their defeat, no matter what the voters have to say about it.

As things now stand, a Democratic win in 2006 is as likely as a vote for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty in the Soviet “elections” of 1930. And for the same reason: the party in power (more precisely its supporters in private business) counts the votes.

Evidence is abundant and compelling that the presidential election of 2004 and key congressional races in 2002 were stolen, primarily through the use of paperless “touch-screen” voting machines and the software that collected and totaled (“compiled”) incoming election returns. Though numerous private individuals and public-interest groups have presented this evidence, it is only through their initiatives that the issue remains alive. Because I have expressed my suspicions repeatedly and at some length, I will not repeat them here.

But let’s suppose, despite all that evidence, that the 2002 and 2004 elections were entirely fair and accurate. If so, this was due solely to the civic-minded decision of the Republicans who built the machines and wrote the software (“source codes”), to “play it straight.” They faced little prospect of exposure if they chose to “fix” the vote totals. The machines produce no independent record of the votes and, as noted, the software is secret. In addition, as numerous public demonstrations have proven, the machines can be readily “hacked” leaving no trace of the tampering.

So it comes to this: whether or not the past elections were stolen, the voting technology is now in place (and expanding under the “Help America Vote Act”) that will allow its designers, the writers of its software, and whoever might have access to the “back door” hookups to produce any election result that they might desire. Short of a confession by a guilty culprit and absent an arithmetic or programming blunder, there is simply no way that fraud can be proven after the fact through an examination of the polling and compiling equipment and software.

To those who demand verification of election returns, there is only one answer: “trust us!” And to those who shout “fraud!” there is the familiar response: “don’t be paranoid.”

But while there are no direct means to validate paperless e-votes, statistical analyses of exit polling can provide external indications of election fraud. And in fact they have done just that as, for example, one such study has calculated the probability of Kerry's loss at less than one in a million.  However, we all know how much impact these statistical studies have had on the final “official” results. Zilch!

And what is the Republican response to those troublesome exit polls? Former RNC Chair, Ed Gillespie, has a straightforward answer: abolish the exit polls which, he claims, have been “proven unreliable” in the last three elections. In other words: “shoot the messenger.”

Then how about legislation requiring a paper record of each vote to provide validation? The Congressional Republicans won’t hear of it. Which causes one to wonder, doesn’t it?  Is it just possible that they suspect (as I am convinced) that if we had a free and honest elections, the GOP would be burnt toast?

The bottom line: Will the Republicans cheat in order to prevent defeat in 2006? They can if they want to, and as we have noted above, their motivation to avoid defeat is extreme.


3) The Democratic Party, the media, and the law are unwilling to do anything about it.

The Democrats: As we all know, John Kerry, who promised to see to it that “every vote was counted,” threw in the towel a few hours after the last polls closed, even as an avalanche of reports of vote total anomalies, of voter intimidation, and of voting machine malfunctions were incoming. The Kerry Campaign, sitting on millions of dollars in their war chest, gave no support to the challenges of the Ohio returns – these challenges were pursued by the Libertarian and Green candidates.

The Democratic Party’s continuing refusal to face up to grim realities was made evident in the DNC’s investigation of the irregularities in the 2004 Ohio election – released just last month. As Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis of the admirable Columbus Free Press see it:

[The DNC report] is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and a party that still doesn't fully understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.

The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant in Ohio’s cities during the 2004 presidential election...

But the DNC reports says those factors do not mean John Kerry won the election, nor does it mean that the new electronic voting machines are unreliable – even though some of the precincts with the highest percentages of reported problems were outfitted with the new electronic voting machines...

The DNC was denied access to the voting machines and software, and to the tabulating computers in Ohio. Apparently on the assumption that what they cannot examine doesn’t exist, “the fraud factor” does not figure significantly into the DNC report.

And so the Democratic Party is cheerfully carrying on as if nothing has changed since Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996. They are looking hopefully to taking back the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, as they fire up “the base,” and solicit still more contributions. They uncritically assume that all they need to do is get more voters to the polls than the GOP, and that the voting machines and compilers will do the rest – reliably and automatically.

Those poor, naive, fools!

Like Charlie Brown, they just assume that if they run up to the football once again, Lucy won’t snatch it away this time. But of course, GOP-Lucy will do just that, thanks to the Democrats’ reliable gullibility.

Like the Brooklyn Dodger fans in the 1940s and 1950s, they keep saying “wait till next year.” And “next year” the “Bums” are creamed again by the Yankees.

2002 and 2004 were “next year” for the Democrats. So too 2006 and 2008.

By refusing to face up to the fact that they’ve been had by the GOP voting machines and software, the Democratic Party is setting itself up for certain defeat in 2006 and 2008.

The Media. A week after the 2004 election, actor Peter Coyote reported:

I received a phone call from a good friend who works at CBS--I've known her for years and she is a Producer for some of the news programs, one well known one in particular. She tipped me off that the news media is in a "lock-down" and that there is to be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2nd. She said similar "lock-down orders" had come down last year after the invasion of Iraq, but this is far worse--far scarier. She said the majority of their journalists at CBS and elsewhere in NYC are pretty horrified--every one is worried about their jobs and retribution Dan Rather style or worse. My source said they've also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time but she was pissed and her journalistic and moral integrity as what she considers to be a government watchdog requires her to speak out, ... [and] to "spread" the word...

Regardless of the reliability of Peter Coyote’s report, it is easy enough to tell if the MSM has put an embargo on the election fraud issue. Just try to find any treatment of the issue on the MSM (Keith Olberman honorably excepted). If there is any such mention, more than likely it is to dismiss accusations of election fraud as “kookery” and “conspiracy theory” – beyond the pale of “respectable” public opinion.

Thus, what may be the greatest political crime in the history of the American Republic is deemed by the MSM as unworthy of their attention. Maybe there was no such crime. But given the unmistakable indication that there might have been, isn’t at least an investigation by the media in order? Say, something on the order of an investigation of the (ultimately innocent) Whitewater land deal by the Clintons?

Law Enforcement. The greatest vulnerability of the e-voting companies might be a rigorous application of state and municipal voting fraud laws. Though I keep a close and steady eye on the issue of electoral integrity, I have heard of no criminal investigations in progress. Have you? If so, please report them to me. (Crisispapers@hotmail.com). Of course, if such investigations are in their early stages, the public is unlikely to hear of them. So some good news just might be “in the pipeline.”


Is there any hope?

Not if things continue as they are.

There may have to be a dramatic disruption in the flow of events. And there is no guarantee that this disruption won’t have horrible consequences. For example, if Al Qaeda manages to slip a nuclear device into a shipping container and it goes off in one of our ports, all bets are off. Martial Law is a distinct probability, and American Democracy will be a goner.

As it happens, Bush’s Department of Homeland Security has done precious little to intercept such horrors. And who knows, Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert operation just might have been able to intercept it – had she been allowed to stay on the job.

Hopefully, if a different kind of “dramatic disruption” comes around, it will work to our favor. For all we know, it may even now be in its early stages: the Rove/Plame/CIA scandal may be at the “third-rate burglary” phase, with the analogs to “the cancer on the Presidency” and the White House tapes still to come. The new “deep throat” may yet enter the stage.

Tomorrow, some state Attorney General or municipal District Attorney might open an investigation of voting fraud. In the United States, elections are administered on the state and municipal level. So if paperless machines were used in said AG’s or DA’s jurisdiction, Diebold and ES&S executives and technicians could be subpoenaed and required to testify under oath. If in fact these companies cooperated in the stealing of a Presidential election, “the truth is out there” to be gathered and exposed by an aggressive prosecutor.

Would that kind of news be just too much to be ignored by the MSM? Who knows?

If that “truth” is that the conduct of all recent elections was 100% copasetic, then the GOP should welcome such investigations. It may be noteworthy that the GOP does not seem to be encouraging such investigations.

Is the mainstream media united and unmovable in its determination to spare the American public the discomfort of reading or hearing bad news about its government and its President? The credibility and audience of the MSM is falling alongside the public opinion scores of G. W. Bush. Will one or two mainstream TV networks or print publications defect from the pack and try to do journalism for a change? Will others follow? Or will the MSM become irrelevant as alternative and independent media and the internet become the primary public sources of news? (The “Pravda/Samizdat solution”).

Is the CIA going to sit still for this? After all, that’s in their charter – stay out of US politics. But of this much we can be confident; the rank and file of the CIA is super-pissed-off. One of their own has been trashed, her operation demolished, and dozens (?) of agents and operatives put in grave danger. Possibly some have been killed. Nor is that all. The CIA has been asked to take the fall for the Iraq fiasco – the result of “flawed intelligence” the Bushistas tell us. The motto on the floor at Langley, “The Truth Shall Make Your Free,” has been effectively supplanted with “The Truth Shall Get You Canned.”

Pissing-off the CIA can be a very dangerous business These folks are very good at overthrowing governments. What does it take to get them to bring these skills home? I’m not talking about tanks surrounding the White House. Just the usual bag of behind the scenes spook-tricks: bribery, blackmail, intimidation, disinformation – you know, the sort of stuff that Karl Rove uses to perfection. If I were Bush, I’d be afraid – very afraid.

What about the Republicans? To date, they are a solid block. In the entire GOP Congressional delegation, not a single Senator or Congressperson has stood up to denounce and deplore Plamegate. What does it take for at least some Republicans to face up to their conflict of loyalties between the Republican Party and the United States Constitution, to which they all swore an oath of allegiance? Where is today’s Howard Baker, now that the country so desperately needs him? Might it be Voinovich? Chaffee? Snowe? Collins? Lugar? McCain? Maybe Chuck Hagel, who has a lot to tell us about e-voting. When will just a few Republicans come to appreciate that, as in Watergate, if the President goes down he could take the party down with him – to avoid which, they may have to cut him loose? When a few start to defect, who will follow?

Then there’s the economy. A sudden downturn would surely get the public’s attention. How long will China and Japan continue to support our deficit spending? As middle class incomes continue to decline, consumer debt expands, and interest rates rise, when does the retail market collapse? With China, Japan and India entering the market and production at a peak, oil and gas prices can only go up. Most informed economists outside of Bush’s reservation are pessimistic. Clearly, the US economy can not go on like this, and yet Bush is determined to “stay the course” – all the way to and over the precipice.

“Something’s gotta give” – and when it does, if the Democrats are smart, resourceful and bold they will seize the moment. But if they sit by and ponder, as they’ve been inclined to do of late, then they, and we, are done for.


What to Do?

So can the GOP be beaten in 2006 and 2008? As we said, not if things continue as they are.

So do we give up? Not on your life! We do our utmost to determine that things do not “continue as they are.”

Here are some suggestions (and send me some of your own):

If you live in a state or a district that uses paperless voting machines, and if there is statistical or other evidence of voting fraud, contact your state Attorney General or your local District Attorney and demand a criminal investigation.

As the 2006 election approaches, join the determined effort to abolish e-voting and to use paper ballots instead. Failing that, demand paper receipts from the e-voting machines. If, as is likely, e-voting and computer compilation remains in place, it is still possible to institute safeguards – e.g., double-balloting, random inspection of touch-screen machines, and parallel compilation of regional votes. (For more details, see my "What Can We The People Do About Election Fraud?).

Insist on exit polling. If the RNC tries to put the exit polling companies out of business, set up alternative exit polls. Same with pre-election polls. It is not unlikely that established organizations such as Gallup will be corrupted and will put out fake figures. In that case, support and publicize the remaining honest polling organizations such as (presumably) Zogby.

A simple majority may not suffice in your district or state. Work relentlessly for a super-majority. If sufficiently large, the “fixers” might not dare to steal the election. Suppose, for example, that the imminently defeatable Rick Santorum were behind in the late polls by 65% to 35%. How would a “surprise” Santorum victory go down? Add this to several more “surprises,” resulting in continuing GOP control of Congress. Might it finally dawn on the US public that their trips to the polls are a waste of time, and that the election results are simply what the GOP want them to be? And might that public finally begin to see the 2002 and 2004 elections in a new light?

In general: Be on the alert for the aforementioned “dramatic disruption of events” and be prepared to exploit it quickly, decisively and intelligently. Better still, work to create that “dramatic disruption.”

Above all, remember: if things continue as they are, we’re cooked. The GOP will not be stopped. They count the votes. Simple as that.

We must see to it that things don’t continue as they are.
 

---

The Wayward Media

By Ernest Partridge

Here are three mini-essays tied together with a common theme: the media.

“Access” – To what?

Its no secret: the former watchdogs of the American media have been transformed into Bush’s lapdogs. Whenever a potential White House or GOP scandal rears its ugly head, you can count on the news media to be otherwise engaged. If you’ve paid any attention to the Tom Delay outrages, Gannon/Guckert, the Downing Street Memos, the civilian casualties in Iraq, The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul, or what the rest of the world thinks of us and our President, you’ve kprobably learned about it from somewhere else: perhaps the foreign press or, of course, the internet. As for the mainstream media (MSM), it's all about Michael Jackson, the runaway bride, or the love lives of assorted Hollywood celebs. And election fraud, just possibly the greatest political crime in the history of the republic? Faggetaboutit. Total embargo.

When members of the Washington press corps are asked why they are giving Bush, Inc. a free pass, we are told that if a reporter criticizes the Bush Administration, that individual faces the loss of access to White House news sources.

Somehow this didn’t keep the media hounds from harassing Bill Clinton throughout his entire two terms.

But what, exactly, is lost if a reporter is denied “access” to the White House or Pentagon press rooms? Is it the privilege of being lied to and stonewalled to one’s face?

Have you ever tuned into a CSPAN broadcast of a White House or Pentagon news briefing? If you have, I defy you to identify even a scrap of news to issue forth from these travesties – well, significant news, that is. You will be told of Shrub’s schedule and then given a heavy dose of propagandistic pablum. You can read that at www.whitehouse.gov , and for that matter, you can see the briefings on CSPAN. But really, why bother?

For five years, we’ve had a dreary run of lies, spin and evasions from the White House press room. At the beginning, Helen Thomas, bless her!, livened things up until she was banished to the back row. And a week ago, at long last, a few reporters held poor Scott McClellan to account. But other than that, your time would be far better spent reading The Guardian, The Times of London, or The Toronto Globe and Mail to find out what is happening in your own country.

Which leads us to wonder: What if Scott McClellan or Rummy held a news briefing and nobody came? Now that would convey an eloquent message to these liars and phonies.

Let’s be blunt about it. Authentic and significant news is rarely dug up and reported by journalists with “access.” Izzy Stone did not have “access,” nor did Woodward and Bernstein. The Pentagon Papers were not handed out in the White House press room. “News” is what Scotty and Rummy don’t want you to hear, and what you have to dig out on your own.

Regrettably, Bob Woodward has since gone over to The Dark Side to write Bush hagiographies. (It’s nasty work but someone’s gotta do it). Now that is "access"  – but to what end?   It comes down to a simple bargain: swapping integrity for "access."  But "what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”  (Mark 8:36)

So when you hear that the press corps has to go easy on Dubya in order to “maintain access,” give that excuse the credence it deserves.

Nada!

---

The Judith Miller Muddle

Why is Judith Miller in jail? What does she know that the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is so determined to hear?

Speculation is all over the map, and rumors abound, because, of course, Fitzgerald (unlike Ken Starr) is doing his job and keeping mum.

And so, until some solid information emerges, I should be reluctant to join the chorus of “what-ifs” and “is it possibles.” However, for whatever they might be worth, here are a few speculations from off the wall.

Amidst the plethora of media commentaries, there is one point of near-general agreement in the MSM: Judith Miller is a heroine – a journalistic Joan of Arc. Leading the choir of admirers is Miller’s employer, The New York Times – the newspaper of historical record which told us all about the treachery of Dr. Wen Ho Lee (false), the guilt of the Clintons in the Whitewater deal (false), the “fact” that had the count gone forward, Bush would still have won Florida in 2000 (false), and, thanks to the very same Judith Miller, the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (false) and Saddam’s acquisition of aluminum tubes for his nuclear program (false).

A heroine? Pardon my dissent.

The alleged heroism of Miller rests upon the assumption that her “source” is indistinguishable in kind from the usual “whistle blower” – e.g., “Deep Throat,” Daniel Ellsberg, Sibel Edmunds, Colleen Rowley, and numerous others who, because they remain “anonymous sources,” can not be named.

Hogwash! The Miller-Cooper “source” (Karl Rove?) is the moral opposite of the aforementioned whistleblowers.

A whistle-blower reports a crime to the journalist. In the Plame/CIA case, the report is the crime. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has said very little to the press, makes the point very succinctly: “This case is not about a whistle-blower. Its about a potential retaliation against a whistle-blower.”  (Joseph Wilson, of course).

The contrast becomes apparent when we ask, along with the journalistic mainstream, “what happens if a reporter can no longer guarantee anonymity of the sources?” The obvious answer, of course, is that the journalist will lose the sources. But that’s not the relevant question. Instead, ask, “what if a reporter can be expected to report a crime, as it is being committed?” Answer: the expectation of that disclosure might prevent the crime. And in fact, as I understand the journalistic code of ethics, a journalist is not required to be silent if aware that a crime is in progress, nor to be silent if the source is reporting a falsehood. And so, if Rove (or whoever the “source” might be) approached a reporter with the tidbit that “Joe Wilson’s wife is a CIA operative in a clandestine activity,” with the expectation that by saying so he soon might be facing an indictment, well then, in that case, Valerie Plame might, to this day, be serving us all by tracking down the existence and distribution of weapons of mass destruction aimed at our “homeland.”

In fact, the act of disclosing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA “operative” was a crime. As such, the moment Cooper or Miller (hypothetically) were told that Plame was a CIA operative, at that moment (a) they were obligated not to disclose this fact, and (b) they were obligated to report the “source” (who had thus committed a crime) to the Justice Department. Every journalist who was witness to this crime wisely followed course (a) and kept silent – all, that is, except Robert Novak, who amazingly, is at large, and not in the slammer alongside Judith Miller. The failure of the contacted reporters to report the crime to Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales is quite excusable. Why bother?

The prevailing opinion is that Novak is free because he has cooperated with the prosecutor. Let us hope!

So why is Judith Miller in jail today? If the “source” was willing to waive confidentiality to Matt Cooper, why not to Miller as well? Perhaps because the reason Miller is in jail has little if anything to do with her refusal to name “sources.” If so, then Miller’s media colleagues may want to reconsider their letters of nomination to the Pulitzer Prize Committee in behalf of Judith Miller.

The presumed “martyrdom” of Judith Miller rests on the assumption that Miller is a reporter who has been victimized by an out-of-control prosecutor. But might she be miscast in this role? Is it not possible that Judith Miller is not really a “reporter” at all, but instead is a “facilitator”– a conveyer of official lies from Rove’s and Cheney’s mouths to our ears, via the New York Times? As such, she might be in possession of information that could break this case wide open were she sufficiently “encouraged,” at long last, to tell the truth – information that no journalist, indeed no citizen, is entitled to withhold from a criminal investigation.

Judith Miller, let us not forget, took the lead in promulgating the myths of the nuclear bomb-making aluminum tubes and the vast storehouses of Saddam Hussein’s WMDs, and did all this on the pages of the (once-)respected and (once-)reliable “flagship of American journalism,” the New York Times.

And Miller published this myth after Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s defecting son-in-law, revealed that he, Kamal, had personally dismantled Saddam’s WMDs. She did so at a time when Hans Blix of the UN Inspections team and Mohammed al Baradai of the International Atomic Energy Agency had failed to find evidence of WMDs or an ongoing atomic weapons program, and at a time when UN inspectors were in Iraq, searching in vain for WMDs.

Even so, Miller steadfastly held to the party line and to her role as a stenographer to a convicted embezzler, Ahmed Chalabi, and to the NeoCons. The evidence of no WMDs was “out there” to be had by a competent reporter. She appeared not to be interested. Miller is therefore either a spectacularly incompetent reporter or a willing co-conspirator in an official lie. No third, benign, explanation is in evidence.

Are the Cooper and Miller cases different in kind, and does the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald want something more from Miller than simply the name of her “source”?  Some are suggesting that Miller, through her close associations with the NeoCons, was in fact the source of the “goods” on Valerie Plame Wilson. Who knows? I don’t, but maybe the Grand Jury does, and now wants Miller’s testimony to tie down the case.

This is one of many “what-ifs,” and the rest is guesswork. So we wait, and hope that Patrick Fitzgerald and his Grand Jury have the extraordinary courage to follow this caper to wherever it leads.

The very future of our democracy may well depend on it.

---

“Fool me Twice...”

From time to time we encounter in the mainstream media (MSM), journalistic concerns about the American public’s declining interest in political and national news. “Shame on you masses!,” we are admonished, and we are reminded of Jefferson’s warning that a nation cannot be both ignorant and free.

I have a different take on this: shame on them!, (the media). True, newspaper circulation and TV news ratings are down, but might not this be due to the fact that more and more American are finally coming to realize that they’ve been suckered by the MSM – and that they must now look elsewhere for accurate, relevant, “fair and balanced” reporting of the news?

“Suckered”? How so? Consider first these now familiar examples of MSM thumbs on the scales of domestic politics.

• 2000. The MSM took no pains to correct the GOP lies that Al Gore had claimed to have “invented the internet” and to have “discovered Love Canal.” The Democrat’s attempts to raise the issue of Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record were unavailing. Immediate public opinion that Gore had won the presidential debates were reversed by post-debate network and cable “spin,” and Frank Luntz’ phoney “focus groups.”
   
• 2003 – February 5. Colin Powell presents Bush’s case for war with Iraq to the United Nations Security Council. Subsequent events and exhaustive and unrestricted searches in Iraq have proven the speech to be pack of lies. But at the time, US Editorial opinion was completely taken in. A sampling: “Powell lays out convincing evidence of Iraq defiance (USA Today); “[Powell] offered a powerful new case that Saddam Hussein’s regime is cooperating with a branch of the al Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical weapons” (Washington Post); “The Powell evidence will be persuasive to anyone who is still persuadable” (The Wall Street Journal); “Powell laid out the need [for war] ... in step-by-step fashion that cannot be refuted without resorting to fantasy” (Chicago Sun-Times). For much more of the same from “the librul media,” follow this link.
   
• 2004. The MSM reports the “Swift Boat” smear of John Kerry without commentary and rebuttal, thus lending credence to the slander. Bush’s apparent use of a listening device in the debates is unreported and unexplored by the MSM. Once again, the Texas Air National Guard issue fails to “take,” and the CBS 60 Minutes report backfires, ending the career of Dan Rather. Post-election, the question of election fraud is totally shut out of MSM reportage and commentary.

But at long last, the public is beginning to wake from its dogmatic slumbers.

• In April, 2004, the Program on International Policy Attitudes reported that “a majority of Americans (57%) continue to believe that before the war Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, including 20% who believe that Iraq was directly involved in the September 11 attacks. Forty-five percent believe that evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found. Sixty percent believe that just before the war Iraq either had weapons of mass destruction (38%) or a major program for developing them (22%).” (PIPA, 2004).   But a year later, just last April (2005), the Gallup poll  reported that 50% believe that Bush “deliberately misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.”  In short, Bush lied, the MSM conveyed the lie at first successfully, but now the public is beginning to see the light.
   
• 2005. Bush’s public lie that he was “doing everything in my power to avoid war” is exposed and refuted by the Downing Street Memos, which go unreported for several weeks until the progressive internet forces it into the MSM, whereupon it disappears again. Nonetheless, Bush’s credibility is severely damaged as only 41% of the public now believes him to be “honest and straightforward” – a drop of nine points since January.  And finally, the Zogby Poll reports that “in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq."

So it appears that the Bush/Cheney/Rove/GOP propaganda machine, and its MSM facilitators, are losing control. “Fool me once, shame on you; ... fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

This has happened many times before, though not often in our history. For example, during the Cold War, the American Press delighted in reporting the often laughable inventions of Pravda and Izvestia. When in 1957 the Red Army put down the Hungarian revolution, the Russian citizens were told that the Army was invited in by the legitimate government to help defeat a “fascist coup.” In 1968, same message, different country: Czechoslovakia . And when the Berlin Wall went up, the Soviet press told the world that it was designed to keep spies from crossing into East Berlin.

But are these fantasies any less credible than the following, dutifully and uncritically reported by the MSM: “They attacked us on 9/11 because they hate our freedoms,” or “Saddam has pilotless aircraft that he can use to release biological warfare on our homeland,” or “there is no doubt that Saddam has reconstituted nuclear weapons,” or “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” or “we’ll do anything we can to avoid war,” or “the insurgents are in their last throes,” or “the detainees in Guantánamo are in a tropical paradise.”

The Busheviks are discovering, like the Bolsheviks before them, that the public soon becomes immune to official lies and starts to look elsewhere for news. When, year after year, Pravda announced “record harvests in the collective farms,” the shelves in the Leningrad and Moscow stores remained bare. Official “news” and the experience of ordinary life just didn’t “fit.” And now, it’s beginning to happen here, as American citizens with memories recall the now demonstrably discredited lies. Still worse for the Bush regime, those lies are on the record where they cannot be unsaid, and where they are immediately available to anyone with access to the internet.

If this slide in credibility continues, what follows? Is it just possible that, at long last, the public will begin to doubt the validity of their elections, past and pending? Will serious and publicized investigations of election returns begin, to be followed by indictments? Will the GOP, perhaps for the first time in a decade, have to face the American voters in honest elections? If so, the jig is up: game, set, match!

Mark Twain once said that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” At long last, truth has put on its boots, and is about to get to work.

And don’t you believe for a moment that Rove, the GOP and Bush, Inc. aren’t acutely aware of this!

In the meantime, what is the public to do? Quite simply, ignore the mainstream media and boycott its sponsors. Support independent and responsible news sources. Then allow the market, so esteemed by the regressive-right, to come to the aid of media reform.

“Build it, and they will come.”

Remember the Sinclair Broadcasting fiasco? Shortly before the 2004 election, this right-wing outfit scheduled an anti-Kerry propaganda piece, “Stolen Honor.” It was never broadcast. And why? Because the Sinclair management had a sudden flash of civic responsibility? Don’t be silly! It was because the stockholders (no doubt predominantly conservative Republicans) were properly alarmed about the citizen complaints and boycotts, and the resulting plunge in stock value.

So if the MSM sees a continuing drop in ratings and the sponsors suffer from boycotts, then the MSM may face a stark choice: reform or die.

Mind you, I’m not guaranteeing that this will happen. Who knows how a wounded Bushista administration and its corporate “stockholders” might strike back. It could be very ugly. But the admirable Russian and Soviet people, under a detestable regime with complete media control, rendered that media irrelevant and eventually overthrew the regime.

Can we do as well, given the advantage of our political traditions and our history?

I think we can. And in view of the alternative prospects before us, how can we honorably fail to make the effort?

---

Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge

---

Hinges of History

By Ernest Partridge

Posted 07.10.05

 

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost. For want of a rider, the battle was lost. For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail. Anon It’s tough to make predictions, Especially about the future. Yogi Berra

History teaches us that “the course of human events” has many surprises, born of random chance and simple luck. History’s “winners” are those who are alert, flexible and creative in the face of these surprises. And that fact should lend comfort to embattled progressives today.

For centuries, philosophers have spun elaborate “theories of history,” spelling out the fates of peoples and nations, as, they claim, the engine of history rolls inexorably along its fore-ordained course.

Plato, Hegel, Spengler, Marx, and in our time Frances Fukayama, have all endeavored to sketch a “map” of the course that history “must” take. They have no use for the lost nail that threw the rider that lost the battle and the empire.

However, the details of actual recorded history indicate that time and again the course of history turns on trivial and unpredictable contingencies. Put simply, on plain dumb luck.

Some examples:

The Battle of Midway, June, 1942.  Just six months after the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese fleet was poised to seize Midway atoll and destroy much of what remained of the American Pacific fleet. If successful, the Hawaiian Islands would be within reach of the Japanese Empire. And if the Islands fell, the American fleet would be driven back to the west coast of the United States, thus prolonging the war.

The American fleet had a feeble force with which to thwart the Japanese onslaught – three aircraft carriers to four. The outcome of the battle likely depended upon the first sighting of the opposing force. Due to a chance break in the cloud cover, an American reconnaissance plane, at the furthest reach of its range, located the Japanese Fleet. Soon thereafter, a Japanese scout spotted the American fleet, but because the aircraft’s radio malfunctioned, a timely report could not be relayed back to the Japanese fleet command.

Due to several additional lucky breaks, which I won’t detail here, the American dive bombers destroyed three Japanese aircraft carriers within minutes, and the fourth was dispatched later that day. After the battle was effectively over and won by the Americans, the crippled carrier Yorktown was sunk by a Japanese submarine. Midway was the decisive battle of the Pacific War. For the remainder of the war, the Japanese never won another sea battle.

Among the twists of fortune that determined the outcome: a break in the cloud cover and a malfunctioning radio.


Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg’s briefcase:   On July 20, 1944, Colonel von Stauffenberg attempted an assassination of Adolph Hitler. Upon entering a conference room at Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, von Stauffenberg placed a briefcase with a time bomb under the table where Hitler was studying some maps. At the table with Hitler was a Colonel Brandt, who happened to catch his foot on the briefcase, which he then placed at the opposite side of a heavy oak table support.

Had Col. Brandt’s foot not encountered the briefcase, Hitler would almost certainly have been killed in the ensuing explosion, which in fact was the fate of several officers in the room. The repositioning of that briefcase cost von Stauffenberg, his family, and thousands of actual and suspected conspirators their lives. Far worse, it probably prolonged the European war by as much as nine months, at the cost of millions of lives.

All of this turned on a German officer’s chance encounter with a briefcase.


The Tape on the Watergate Door. June 17, 1972. On his routine rounds at the Watergate office building in Washington DC, night watchman Frank Wills happened to spot some tape on the door between the parking garage and the stairwell. Believing that the tape was left by the cleaning crew, Wills removed it only to discover later that it had been replaced. He then called the police who subsequently arrested the burglars at the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

If Wills had not noticed the tape (placed to defeat the locking mechanism) and if G. Gordon Liddy had not replaced it, Richard Nixon would probably have completed his second term and the course of US history would have gone in a different direction. How different? Unknown and unknowable – but certainly different.

Further examples are endless. What if the French Admiral de Grasse at Yorktown, and the Prussian Field Marshal von Blucher at Waterloo had not arrived “just in time.” What if Lincoln had not gone to the theater that night or if a guard had been stationed outside the Presidential box? The assassin’s aim and the bullet’s trajectory are probabilistic – literally “hit or miss.” On these attempts, history turns. Successful: Archduke Ferdinand at Sarejevo in 1914, JFK at Dallas in 1963, RFK at Los Angeles in 1968, Martin Luther King at Memphis in 1968. Failed: Theodore Roosevelt at Milwaukee in 1912, Franklin D. Roosevelt at Miami in 1933, Ronald Reagan at Washington in 1981.

No doubt, the reader can think of many more “hinges of history” that turned on chance contingencies and simple luck.

In the near future we are likely to encounter numerous crossroads or “hinges” that might lead either to the dissolution or the salvation of our Republic. Whatever the outcome, the nation and the world that emerges from the present crisis will be very different from the nation and world that we lived in at the close of the twentieth century, just five years ago.

Clearly, the Bush administration is coming upon hard times, with no end in sight for the Iraq disaster, with less and less of the public believing Bush’s and Cheney’s lies, with at least a few prominent Democrats growing some spine, with the growing influence of alternative media, and, as a result of all of this and more, a continuing decline of public approval of Bush and his regime.

In this volatile political environment, here are a few “hinges” that come to mind, many of which are closely interconnected. No doubt the informed and engaged reader will think of many more.

Because “the wounded beast is vulnerable:”

• Is “Plamegate” about to unravel at last? This possibility has emerged within the last couple of days, as Time Magazine has yielded to a court order and has turned relevant documents and e-mails over to the judge. Time Magazine is said to be preparing a blockbuster article based on the notes of its reporter, Matt Cooper. The other targeted reporter and publication, Judith Miller and The New York Times, continue to resist the order of the court. Lawrence O’Donnell claims that he knows, on good evidence, that the Plame snitch was Karl Rove. If so, then Rove would be guilty of perjury, for he reportedly denied under oath that he disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame. Could be dynamite! (For more on this developing story, see The Crisis Papers page, "The Rove-PlameGate Connection").
   

• Will 2004 election fraud be revealed? And if so, will the mainstream media report it? There is strong statistical, circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that the 2004 was stolen from John Kerry and the Democrats. If it was, then there are at least dozens of individuals and as many as several hundred who were involved in the fraud and who could testify and/or provide physical and documented evidence of this crime. As Iraq, the economy, and scandal cumulatively continue to weaken The Great Bush/GOP Political/Media Machine, will serious and sustained criminal investigations finally be launched, and will at least a few investigative reporters finally get on the case?
   

• Are there many “Deep Throats” in the system just itching to spill some beans? How much longer will the military and the CIA tolerate the abuse that has been heaped upon them by the Bush gang? How many individuals within the Bush Administration are prepared to meet an enterprising reporter at some parking garage in DC? Come to think of it, might some CIA discontents, proven experts at overthrowing foreign governments, even now be setting their sights closer to home?
   

• Will the Mainstream Media (MSM) finally do its job and start reporting the news and a diversity of informed opinions? Unquestionably, George Bush owes both of his “elections” to the cooperation and compliance of the MSM. The MSM tolerated and even promulgated slanders against Democratic candidates Al Gore (“inventing the internet”) and John Kerry (“Swift Boats”), while overlooking the manifest embarrassments and disqualifications of George Bush (AWOL from the National Guard, Harken Energy, etc.). A mirror-image support of the Democrats and smearing of the Busheviks is not required. Just the facts, as in the era of Murrow and Cronkite, and unconstrained investigative reporting, as in the era of I. F. Stone, and Woodward and Bernstein, would quite suffice to bring down the House of Bush. But how would such reform be possible, when the media mega-giants are controlled by the “sponsors” of Bush, Inc.? More about that, below.
   

• Alternatively, might the Mainsteam Media be “Pravda-ized” – i.e. ignored and marginalized by a public that recognizes it as the propaganda arm of the Right-wing-GOP-Corporate establishment? Either way – an honest media or an irrelevant media – if the Bush Regime loses its media support, it is in the deepest of doo-doo. For in either case, the truth finally will “out,” and without question, the Busheviks “can’t handle the truth!” But why would the MSM abandon Bush? This leads to our next “hinge:”
   

• Will the corporate establishment finally come to its senses and realize that where Bush is leading the country, they should not want to follow? Will it then abandon the Bush regime, to be followed by the corporate mainstream media? The mega-rich that are being lavishly rewarded for their funding of Bush, Inc. seem to believe that they can continue to loot the US economy and impoverish the rest of us forever, without consequence. Economic collapse and depression, they apparently believe, happens to what Leona Helmsley calls “the little people” (namely, us) and not themselves. The exporting of the manufacturing base, the dismantling of the public education system that supplies their skilled work force, the loss of our leadership in scientific and technological research and development – all these, they seem to think, are isolated phenomena, without impact upon their personal wealth, or to the “bottom lines” of their corporate annual reports. These fortunate few are, after all, educated individuals. How can they believe such catastrophic folly? Especially when numerous studies have proven the national economy almost always fares better under Democratic administrations and Congresses (see Hulbert and Varian). Leaving aside morality, compassion, or national loyalty, for no other reason than rational self-interest, the intelligent Republican corporatists should be striving to alter the course of this ship of fools before it self-destructs. Whether they will remains an open question.
   

• How will the public respond when the economy collapses? Note: I said “when” not “if”. Even died-in-the-wool Republican economists and investors are coming to realize that we simply can’t go on like this. For example, Steven Roach, the chief economist of the brokerage firm Morgan Stanley, predicts, with 90% confidence, that we face “economic armageddon."  As Bushite “reverse Robin-Hoodism” continues to drain cash from the paychecks and bank accounts of average Americans and into the pockets of the Super-Rich, and as the over-extended debts of those ordinary folks finally max-out, the shrinkage of disposable income will first affect the entertainment industries and retailing, which will lay off workers and eventually go bust. Then the dominoes begin to fall. Thanks to the Bush deficits and the decline of the dollar among international currencies, interest rates must rise followed by home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies – unprotected now, thanks to the new “credit reform” laws enacted by this GOP Congress. Will millions of newly jobless, homeless Americans, without health care or educational opportunities – millions who only recently knew financial and job security – sit still for this?

Not for a moment! This is a prescription for revolution. If lucky, the elites will face economic ruin as the hungry and impoverished masses rise up and strip them of their wealth. If unlucky, the retaliation turn violent, and the very freedom and lives of the privileged looters will be in peril. Just possibly, the opulent elites might foresee all this before we all go over the cliff, and finally call an end to the GOP orgy of affluence (see above).
 

Because “The Wounded beast is dangerous:”

• Will Bush launch an attack on Iran or Syria?   If so, will the public rally behind “the Commander in Chief” again, as it did after 9/11 and the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq? Similarly,
   

• Will Bush be bailed out by another terrorist attack in the United States? The opportunities for terrorist attacks are wide open, even inviting, as chemical plants remain unguarded, nuclear power facilities remain unprotected, and shipping containers remain uninspected.
   

• Will the Democrats and Liberals be scapegoated as the cause of our domestic woes? Will Bush’s foreign policy and military reversals be attributed to a “stab in the back” by the same Democrats and Liberals? Why not? It worked beautifully for Hitler and the Nazis. (There, I said it! Unlike Senator Durbin, I will not apologize).
   

• As protests escalate and the Bush regime unravels, will they retaliate by declaring a national emergency and installing a police state? Can it happen here? Yes it can. It has  already begun.. Cf. The Patriot Act, Guantánamo, and the continuing incarceration, without charge, counsel or prospect of trial of American citizen, Jose Padilla.

More “hinges” briefly noted:

• Will the public finally decide it’s had enough of Tom DeLay’s sleaze, the war profiteering and corruption of Halliburton et al, and the hypocrisy of the Religious Right?
   

• Will OPEC switch from Dollars to Euros?
   

• Will China and Japan refuse to continue their support of Bush’s deficits?
   

• Will an international “coalition of the fed-up” emerge and finally take concerted action against the Number One “rogue nation” – namely, US? How long will the international community put up with the Bushista refusal to cooperate with multilateral efforts to combat global warming, with the international criminal court, with nuclear arms reduction, etc. Few American citizens realize how vulnerable we are to economic sanctions from abroad.  Boycotts and embargoes on vital resources, most of all oil, could quickly bring about a collapse of the US economy. All this without firing a shot at our “super-power” military.
   

• When will the world peak in oil production and the increased demand on oil from the Pacific rim result in sharp rises in fuel prices? With what effect? As the advanced industrial nations of Europe and Asia accelerate research, development and implementation of post-petroleum energy sources, will the United States, wedded to the doomed oil economy, become an industrial/technological has-been?

We don’t know and can’t know the answers to these questions with any degree of confidence. Nor is this a complete list. Perhaps the decisive “hinge,” redirecting our national course either toward ruin or renewal, will be something that we cannot anticipate at the moment.

But we need not be mere spectators in this unfolding of the history of the present. We can, indeed we must, be active agents in this unfolding. These “hinges of history” can be moved deliberately by determined individuals, alone or collectively. Once again, the record of the past testifies to the capacity of peoples and nations to direct their fates either toward ruin or renewal.

It happened in the year 1933, when two national leaders ascended to power in Germany and in the United States. Undoubtedly, had President von Hindenburg successfully resisted Adolph Hitler’s grab for power, and had Herbert Hoover won re-election in 1932, the world today would be vastly different than it is.

In 1933, both Germany and the United States were ripe for a descent into despotism. We were the lucky ones. In Franklin Roosevelt we had a President who had a lucid vision of ends, and who was flexible and inventive as to means. The objectives of the New Deal were clear: jobs, security, opportunity, economic justice, civil liberties, for all Americans, in the context of economic recovery for the nation. How to accomplish all this in the midst of a devastating depression was a question without a simple correct answer, but with an abundance of proffered “answers,” most of them wrong. Doing nothing was not an option. Intelligent and imaginative social-economic “engineering” was in order and, through trial and error, inspiring leadership, and a shared sense of national purpose and unity, we slowly and deliberately developed and validated a series of governmental institutions and regulations – Social Security, unemployment insurance, Federal deposit insurance, expanded educational opportunities, and much, much more.

And now, George Bush and his merry band of oligarchs are determined to tear it all down.

In the crisis before us, and the crises shortly to come, the progressives have a distinct advantage over the right-wing regressives, notwithstanding the regressives’ current hold on power.

As in the nineteen-thirties, conditions today call for alertness, flexibility, intelligence, creativity, compassion, and a sense of shared national purpose – qualities prized by progressives.

George Bush and his cronies possess none of these qualities. Bush is inflexible. He “stays the course,” and is incapable of admitting errors. He has no use for trained intelligence and expertise, but instead is controlled by “gut intuition” and a dogmatism that is detached from the ongoing flow of events. His behavior and policies prove that  Bush's “compassionate conservatism” is a cruel mockery. “We the people of the United States” are not his constituents – the corporate “stockholders” of Bush, Inc. who have purchased his Presidency, now own him.

Even so, Bushism can be defeated, provided the vulnerabilities of this political/economic malignancy are recognized and attacked by the opposition with diligence, intelligence and creativity.

So far, the Democratic Party has been a passive and compliant disappointment. It must either wake up to its responsibilities or be taken over by progressives, just as the Republican party was captured by the oligarchs and theocrats.

In his speech last week to the troops at Fort Bragg, George Bush discovered that his lies have lost their leverage. The polls suggest that at long last the public (less his “base”) has finally begun to wise-up. “Fool me twice – not gonna be fooled again.”

At the same time, the revelations from Downing Street of the conniving and deceit that led us into an immoral war have taken on a life of their own, thanks to the internet and alternative press, and notwithstanding first the silence of, and then the debunking by, the mainstream media.

The pressure of public outrage is building, but it is diverse, diluted, inchoate, and without leadership and direction. Today, millions of our fellow citizens, as they watch and read the MSM, feel that they are isolated, powerless and alone in their disgust with the Bush regime and its policies. But when these disgusted citizens look about and find they have company, and if strong and charismatic leadership emerges and acts decisively, a community of outrage will coalesce and acquire an identity. When it does, the peoples’ will may be irresistible.

Sadly, there might be an opposite result – a swift and ruthless repression by those in control of our government, as they find that their privilege, power and wealth are in peril, and as they come to fear that they might soon be facing the just retribution of the law.

If we choose to be spectators in the coming drama, they may well have their way.  But if enough of us choose to be agents in the struggle we may yet succeed in reclaiming our freedom, our dignity, and our country.

---

NO TIME FOR DESPAIR

 

Ernest Partridge,

posted June 26, 2005

A Shel Silverstein cartoon of a few decades past depicts two prisoners, shackled to the wall of an ancient dungeon. One says to the other, “Now here is my plan.”

One must admire the prisoner’s indomitable will, however unrealistic. Fortunately, the present political situation in the United States is not hopeless, though one might think so to read some of the e-mail responses to our essays:

• The fact of the matter is, the new Republican Party is in power, and it will take more than a majority of voters to dislodge them in 2006. If you own the system, you can rig it to give you the results you want.
   

• I don't think the House of Bush will fall anytime soon. Corporate America has things just the way they want them and there's too many regular people drunk on Jaysus and fear. The Bush Administration has tapped into this perfectly.
   

• I'm sorry to say so, but I believe resistance is futile. The communists kept the Soviet Union in an iron grip for almost a hundred years. No rebellion even came close to oust the commies and they were bumbling amateurs compared to the Bush camarilla.

Please understand, I am not an irrepressible Pollyanna – I am fully aware that we may be in the dusk before a long night of despotism. Like most visitors to the progressive internet websites, I too am tormented by anguish over what we have lost and by dread of still worse to follow. But nothing would be more beneficial to Bush, Rove, Cheney and the Busheviks than the surrender of their adversaries to despair and thence paralysis.

I am reminded of a slogan from World War II (revived by Paul Rogat Loeb): “The difficult can be done right away, the impossible will take a little longer.”

Several recent developments suggest that our cause, far from being impossible, has in fact gained strength as opportunities now arise. We’ve suffered the burden of discouragement in the face of the formidable financial, political and propaganda advantages of Bush, Inc. All the more reason to take inventory of our assets and of hopeful trends.

The Mainstream Media are not in total command of public opinion and are losing credibility.

The mainstream media (MSM) have been the despair of the progressives. Despite the absurd right-wing accusation of “liberal bias,” the MSM have been obedient stenographers to the Bush regime. Among the corporate media, election fraud has been a forbidden topic, and for two weeks after the Times of London broke the story on the Downing Street Memos (DSM), this explosive revelation of the Bush/Blair conspiracy to make war was hidden in the back pages of a few newspapers and was virtually missing from the broadcast media – until, at long last, it simply could no longer be ignored (see below).

And yet the MSM problem is not altogether bleak. The MSM subservience to Bush and the GOP is exacting a corporate cost in media credibility, trust, and public respect – a cost that the industry may not be able to sustain.

In September 23, 2004, the Gallup Poll reported that:

The news media’s credibility has declined significantly, with just 44% of Americans expressing confidence in the media’s ability to report news stories accurately and fairly. This is a significant drop from last year at this time and reflects the lowest level of confidence in the media since Gallup first asked the question in 1972.

And Timothy Maier, in World Net Daily, notes that:

A recent Gallup Poll says Americans rate the trustworthiness of journalists at about the level of politicians and as only slightly more credible than used-car salesmen. The poll suggests that only 21 percent of Americans believe journalists have high ethical standards, ranking them below auto mechanics but tied with members of Congress. More precisely, the poll notes that only one in four people believe what they read in the newspapers.

Read Dana Milbank’s disgraceful attack on John Conyers and his DSM hearing, and you might appreciate why the public is abandoning the MSM. (See also Conyers' reply).  To be sure, many Bushophiles will be heartened by this outrageous “news item,” and perhaps a few may be persuaded that the hearing was, as Milbank put it, “a trip to the land of make-believe.” But every time such an abomination is passed off as “journalism” – and by The Washington Post, no less! – the MSM credibility is deflated just a little bit more. It is most unlikely that Dana Milbank will every recover the reputation that he relinquished with this attack on John Conyer’s hearing. I can testify that I will never again take seriously anything he writes.

Sadly, Milbank’s mischief is not an aberration amongst the MSM. Similarly, the credibility of The New York Times, that “flagship of American journalism,” was seriously eroded by the WMD fantasies of Judith Miller – still employed by the Times, by the way. Moreover, the New York Times “uncovered” and then harangued about the Whitewater non-scandal that harassed the Clintons, throughout Bill Clinton’s term of office. And don’t get me started on the MSM’s accusations that Al Gore had claimed to have “invented the internet” (false) and “discovered” Love Canal (false), or the MSM’s failure to expose the vicious “Swift Boat” slander of John Kerry.

One must also wonder how long the MSM can persist with this behavior. While they are willing purveyors of Bushistic propaganda and non-reporters of information damaging to the Bush regime, they are also businesses. The delinquency of the MSM has financial consequences that were of no concern to Josef Goebbels or Stalin’s Pravda.  As the MSM loses credibility with the public, it loses readers and viewers, hence there is a loss of advertising revenues, hence a loss of stock value. Will the stockholders willingly continue to sacrifice their investments on the alter of political pandering? Doubtful.

In the meantime, authentic and courageous journalism persists.

This week, the WoodStein/Watergate Award goes to Michael Smith of The Times of London, who obtained and published the Downing Street Memos. And the Dan Ellsberg/Deep Throat Award goes to the unknown Brit official who passed these documents to Smith and to The London Times.

Heroes, both. But British, both.

Where are the American journalistic heroes, now that we so desperately need them?

The Alternative Media works!

A week ago Sunday, Tim Russert referred to “the famous Downing Street Memo.” (DSM)

“Famous?!” No thanks to Russert and his cohorts in the MSM.

Like the election fraud issue and the Gannon/Guckert affair, news of the DSM disclosure was kept alive by the small independent progressive publications and by the progressive internet websites – not to mention the irate readers of same who then besieged the MSM with letters of outrage at the media’s silence and negligence.

When the MSM could no longer ignore the Downing Street Memo, they immediately set about to disarm the issue. At the Conyers hearing, Congressman Barney Frank summed up the MSM response perfectly: “What the memo says is false, and besides, we knew all along what it was telling us.” (Paraphrased from memory).

Contradiction aside, consider the implications of that latter dismissal. “We knew all along that before the war, Bush was lying to us and the Congress when he said that he was doing all that he could to avoid war - a lie that he repeated just this week.”

True, lying to Congress is a felony and an impeachable offense, but never mind all that. Whaddaya think about the Jackson acquittal, and how about them Pistons!

Slowly, ever so slowly, the public is beginning to wake up to the fact that the MSM are George W. Bush’s obedient puppy-dogs. And those Americans who still want to know what’s really going on in their government, their economy, and the world beyond, are now looking elsewhere: to the international press and to the internet.

For example, just today (Sunday) I read about still more Downing Street Memos which provide further evidence of Bush’s conspiracy to wage an illegal war. I learned this from the Times of London, via the internet. I also read about Bush’s absurd claim, once again and just last week, that the Iraq war is a response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I read this in an article from Agence France Presse (Paris) – via the internet.

We have a long way to go in the United States, before our citizens attain the sophistication and skepticism of the Soviet citizens who finally gave zero credibility to Pravda, Izvestia, and Gostelradio, and then turned to international news sources and to the unauthorized and illegal “private journalism,” the Samizdat. And when the Soviet public no longer believed its government, the Soviet Union was finished.

And now, at last, an American Samizdat is emerging.

Bush’s approval rate is falling, with no foreseeable reversal.

The poll numbers, as usual, vary. But Bush’s approval numbers are between 41% and 46%. The latest New York Times/CBS poll reports 42% reports 42%.  These are the lowest scores of the Bush Administration, and the trend line continues to fall. If the numbers go below 40% this will likely indicate that Bush will be losing his “base.”

Likewise the GOP Congress.

The same poll reports 33% approval of the Congress, with only 19% of those polled stating that the Congress shares their priorities.

Republicans are deserting Bush.

At last, Bush appears to be losing complete control of the Republican Congress. With only a quarter of the population approving, Bush’s Social Security plan appears dead on arrival. Congress also rebuked Bush with its approval of stem cell research and with its scaling back of the Patriot Act. John Bolton’s confirmation is in jeopardy again. None of this would be possible but for the defection of a few Republican members of Congress.

Consider next, this sharp criticism of the Bush Administration’s reassurances concerning Iraq:

Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq.

One could scarcely imagine an “establishment Democrat,” apart from Howard Dean, uttering these words in public. The source? Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska.

The marriage of convenience between moderate (traditional) Republicans and the radical right, may be heading toward divorce.

Jerry Landay,  a former CBS News Correspondent summarizes the points of contention between the moderates (“Conservative Originalists”) and the radicals (“Bush Ideologues”):

Conservative Originalists believe in conserving useful institutions and traditions, changing them in the light of changing times and circumstances, and opposing fiscal irresponsibility. An Originalist abhors budgetary deficits, the erosion of the powers of the states, extremism in the politicization of judges, weakening the separation of church and state, and reckless expansionist international policies.

The Bush ideologues have violated all of these tenets.

It was an odd coupling at the outset, and it is a wonder that it has lasted this long. It is equally astonishing that the Democrats have not aggressively exploited this tension within the GOP.

Truth is a formidable asset: – and conversely a deadly adversary of Bushism.

The Busheviks are not only adversaries of the Democrats and liberals; they are also at odds with the real world. And that is a contest they cannot win. The war in Iraq is a disaster and is getting worse, despite Dick Cheney’s proclamation that the insurgents are in their “death throes.” No amount of re-iteration of the Iraqi WMD myth will make it so. And Bush, along with his friends in the industry-front “Global Climate Coalition” can not abolish atmospheric physics and chemistry.

The lies of the Bushites are on video tape and cannot be erased – and they are accumulating. And as they do so, the credibility of this corrupt administration continues to erode. Today, more and more of our fellow citizens are finally coming to realize that they’ve been duped.

Eventually the lies will be the downfall of the Bush regime. But if they can maintain the curtain of lies for just two more elections, they win, and that “downfall” may only be manifested at length in the enduring reputation of Bush, Inc. when future histories are written. On the other hand, the downfall may come very soon, before the Bushites can do much more damage.

How soon? On that question rests the fate of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party that has spawned it. And the fate of the United States and the world community of nations.

A Sense of Justice is also a formidable asset:

Since the Bush regime took office in 2001, we've seen:

• “Reverse Robin-Hoodism” – taking from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich.
   

• Borrowing from our children and grandchildren to pay for our profligacy.
   

• Condoning the torture of prisoners, and holding others in prison indefinitely, without charge, without benefit of counsel or trial.
   

• Starving social and civic services – the schools, fire and police protection, infrastructure.
   

• Ravaging the environment.
   

• Impoverishing children, widows, the elderly, future generations.
   

• The loss of 1,700 of our soldiers and the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens.

All this and more is an affront to common decency and an innate sense of justice. Much of this injustice is a direct violation of our Constitution. It persists due to the apathy, the ignorance, the denial, or the confusion of the public. Many of these outrages are sustained by a bodyguard of excuses and myths: “trickle-down economics” (the rising tide raising all boats), the prosperity for allthat must result from the tax cuts fir the wealthy – “just you wait,” “collateral damage” of “the war on terror,” the “few bad apples.”

But despite all the diversions and propaganda of Bush’s spin merchants, these injustices remain and they fester. Is there a limit to how much of this moral outrage the American public will tolerate before that public cries out, “enough!” and demands remedy?

We may soon find out.

When Wounded, the Beast is Most Vulnerable – and Most Dangerous.

George W. Bush has not, throughout his lifetime, exhibited “grace under pressure.” Whenever he has found himself in difficulty, his Dad or his Dad’s associates have come to Dubya’s rescue.

Now there is no one to bail him out.

Remember, during the first debate, when he complained, several times, that “it’s hard work!”?  No wonder: the four years since his “selection” may well be the first time in his life that he has ever been forced to work. And now, in the Oval Office he is way, way, over his head in responsibility and in the demands of intellect and competence.

Thus it is more than likely that in the near future we may witness the disintegration – the “disassembling” – of the President of the United States. It won’t be a pretty sight.

Bush and his gang have huge stakes in keeping their sorry regime together, for if it falls and is followed by a restoration of the rule of law – with a Congress willing and able to investigate with the powers of subpoena and discovery, and with a functioning Department of Justice – the Busheviks face far more dire consequences than a loss of office, or even of fortune. Given the known lawlessness of this regime, and no doubt much more that we don’t know about, many individuals now in office may be facing real time-served in the Federal slammer. Add to that, once out of office, they would be well-advised to avoid foreign travel – in particular, near The Hague.

What they might do to avoid all this – i.e., to remain in office – is fearful to contemplate. Ben Tripp in Counterpunch  offers fair warning:

The people aren't afraid of [Bush] any more, they're sick of hearing about terrorism and they are, despite their general lack of interest in matters beyond our borders, tired of being hated around the world, killed in Iraq, and unemployed back home. Opposition calls for investigation and even, god love 'em, impeachment, are being met with increasingly desperate Stalinist tactics such as Republican leaders locking the Senate doors, turning off all the lights, and pretending not to be in when the two or three Democrats with any gumption show up to do business. It sounds fun, but it isn't.

Not desperate, the Bush Gang started a war, disassembled the government (that means lying), and sank the economy. Desperate, what will they do? I tremble to think.

I am reminded of Constantin Costa-Gravas’s great political film, “Z” (1969). Based upon events in post-war Greece, the movie portrays a country where the people, led by a courageous liberal politician, rise up against a corrupt government. On the brink of victory, the politician is assassinated.  When the criminal investigation of the murder leads to the ruling elites, the military takes over and establishes a dictatorship.

When wounded the beast is most dangerous.

But also, most vulnerable.

There is strength and courage in numbers – in the perception of the oppressed that they are not alone. If the Bush regime fails to recover total control of the GOP and the Congress and soon, its current vulnerability is quite likely to increase and accelerate.  As with Watergate, that which is believed to be impossible may be reconceived by the public to possible, then probable, and finally inevitable, provided the people are willing to take risks and exert energy in their struggle to regain control of their government. It is a sequence, a story, repeated throughout history, and most vividly for our compatriots, in the American revolution and in the decline and fall of Richard Nixon.

Perhaps the most formidable obstacle to the overthrow of the Bush/GOP/Theocrat regime is the GOP ownership and control of the machines that determine our elections. If the power of, and allegiance to, the Bush regime continues to erode, this obstacle too might be overcome, as it must.

If, as I am convinced, Bush and the GOP owe their control of the White House and the Congress to voting fraud, then there are at least dozens and perhaps hundreds, who know the truth of this conspiracy. But as the threat of retaliation subsides, some may at last come forward with the decisive evidence. Consider also that elections are administered, not nationally, but by state and municipal authority (think Kathryn Harris and Kenneth Blackwell). Accordingly, state Attorneys General and municipal District Attorneys are empowered to investigate and indict those suspected of voting fraud. Empowered, but to date, intimidated and paralyzed. As the political threat subsides, it becomes ever more possible that these officers of the law might at last, do their jobs and remove this dagger aimed at the heart of our democracy.

In the midst of this crisis, it may be helpful to remember that in the Chinese language, the concept of “crisis” is written with the conjoined symbols of “danger” and “opportunity.”

Despair is self-fulfilling. So too is hope.

The strongest argument against despair, is that it acts to bring about the anticipated disaster. A population that says, in concert, “what’s the use?” is a population that is, in effect, is telling the despot, “please rule us – we won’t resist.” Conversely, hope is the parent of opportunity and the cement that binds and sustains alliances and drives rebellion to its successful conclusion.

The trends are hopeful and the opportunities are before us. We can win back our country. --posted 07.20.05

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

---

LAST CHANCE FOR CIVILIZATION

Ernest Partridge

May 16, 2005
 

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing. Elizabeth Colbert (2005) I have optimism of the intellect and pessimism of the will. Unknown

 

Humanity is facing a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. The final depletion of petroleum reserves is likely within this century. Without this energy source, and with no alternative sources in place, the Earth could probably not support half of the present population of six billion souls.  (Watt, 8-9)   That remnant of humanity would subsist at a level of poverty suffered today by the typical Bangladeshi. Furthermore, because concentrated and accessible mineral and energy resources will no longer be available, the “low-hanging fruit” having been harvested by preceding generations, there can never be a restoration of industrial civilization.

Now the good news: this dreadful fate can be avoided.

And the bad news: there appears to be no political will in the United States to effect a rescue.
 

Now that I have your attention, let’s examine the evidence.

It is impossible to comprehend the total reliance of our industrial civilization upon cheap and abundant energy. Prior to the industrial revolution, the “civilized” life of the small minority privileged individuals, for example in ancient Greece and Rome, was built upon the backs of hordes of slaves and draft animals. The use of bio-fuels (e.g. wood) was essentially confined to cooking, space heating, and metallurgy.

Today, the average North American utilizes each day the energy equivalent of thousands of slaves (one slave =1/3 horsepower hours per day) and horses (one horse = 6 horsepower hours per day).  (Cottrell, 18, 21)  Fossil energy transports his food thousands of miles to his table. Petroleum products are the source of farm fertilizers and they drive farm machinery. Because of the productivity of fossil fuel driven industrial agriculture the average American farmer now feeds fifty of his fellow citizens. In a very real sense, sense, we “eat petroleum.”  (Partridge, August, 2002)   If the oil supply were to dry up with no successor fuel at hand, most of our population would have to return to the land to raise their own food, only to find that the fertile and had been sacrificed to suburban sprawl or lost to erosion and desertification. In addition, if one contemplates the energy expended to move us to and from work, to extract and transport raw materials, to manufacture and distribute consumer goods, to educate and employ the specialists required to sustain a complex civilization, then one might begin to appreciate the indispensable role of energy in the support of industrial civilization.

True, the wasteful average American uses twice as much energy as equally affluent Europeans. But compare US energy consumption with that of less fortunate individuals in the “developing world.” That Average American uses about fifty times as much fossil fuels as the average citizen of India, and about five times the world per-capita use. (Wackernagel and Rees, 85)

Economic optimists such as the late Julian Simon, like to tell us that the world population of six billion is not all that much, when we take into account the vast land area of the planet. Perhaps you have heard, as I have, that the entire world population could fit comfortably into the state of Texas. So let’s consider that example, as we take out our handy pocket calculator. The area of Texas is 268,581 square miles, or 171,891,840 acres. Divide that by six billion, and you have 0.03 acres per person, or about the area of an ordinary apartment: 1307 square feet. This is, of course, allowing no space for roads, schools, manufacturing plants, agricultural land, forests, watershed, etc. As for parks, forests, lakes, and other recreational areas, fagetaboutit.

In point of fact, far more land is required to support Western European and North American life-styles than the land of one’s personal residence. To that personal homestead, one must add the aforementioned agricultural land, watershed, roads, industrial facilities, schools, etc. required to fulfill the needs of that resident.

Two Canadian scholars, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees (1996), have called this “supporting land” the “ecological footprint.”  They have calculated the “ecological footprint” of the Average American at 12.6 acres, the average (Asian) Indian at one acre, and the world average at 4.4 acres. Accordingly, the ecological footprint of greater Vancouver, BC, is roughly equal to the area of Washington state. For all six billion human beings to live at the economic level of the average North Americans would require the land mass of three Earths. And finally, write Wackernagel and Rees, “humanity’s ecological footprint is as much as 30 percent larger than nature can sustain in the long run. In other words, present consumption exceeds natural income by 30 percent and is therefore partially dependent on capital (wealth) depletion.” (p. 90) And that depletion, of course, is largely the depletion of non-renewable energy resources – primarily fossil fuels.

Bottom line: as the oil runs out and fuel prices soar, we’d damned well better be phasing in other energy sources, or homo sapiens just might go the way of the dinosaurs – without the nudging of a killer asteroid.

And note that I’ve said nothing so far about global warming. If we are to believe the consensus conclusion of all atmospheric scientists (industry sponsored “biostitutes” excluded), global fossil fuel use must be severely curtailed in advance of the natural depletion of petroleum reserves if a climate catastrophe is to be avoided. (Lest I digress, this urgent topic must be set aside for another essay).

Fortunately, we just might avoid the twin catastrophes of severe global warming and the approaching end of petroleum energy. But to do so will require coordinated global commitment, the best efforts and lavish public support of a large cadre of scientists and engineers, and massive investments in new technologies and infrastructures.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration is committed to a race in precisely the wrong direction. The Bush response to the looming day of dreadful reckoning is to starve research, development and investments in alternative energy sources, and to bring that day of reckoning ever closer by accelerating the consumption of fossil fuels. It’s as if Captain Smith of the Titanic ordered that all lifeboats be tossed overboard, and then directed the helmsman to proceed at flank speed toward the iceberg.

Fortunately, there is, in fact, an abundance of potential energy sources, some already in use, albeit in minuscule amounts compared the usage of depletable fossil fuels. And these alternative sources do not exacerbate the global warming emergency.

All useful energy, nuclear, tidal, and geo-thermal power excepted, comes from the sun. Coal, oil, natural gas, bio-fuels all contain solar energy captured by photosynthesis and transformed into hydrocarbons. Wind energy is generated by uneven solar heating of the earth’s surface, and hydroelectric power is derived from solar-induced evaporation and precipitation. Radiant energy from the sun, falling upon the earth’s surface, can be concentrated through solar collectors, or directly converted into electricity through photo-electric cells. Electricity and elemental hydrogen are secondary energy sources – “energy conveyers,” to use physicist Amory Lovins’ term – the primary sources of which are any of the above.

All biomass and bio-waste contains recoverable fuel, though not all of it is economically recoverable. Ethanol from corn is a newsworthy example although, to be sure, as currently produced, it is a net-minus source of energy – i.e., more energy is expended in its production than is recovered from the ethanol itself. But this is an  exceptional and solvable case, as the Brazilians have demonstrated. (RMI 101-107)  Dried biomass – wood, paper, sawdust, corn-stalks, lawn cuttings – produces heat energy from burning, though this is an inefficient and polluting energy source. A far better source is the anoxic (“oxygen starved”) decomposition of biomass, which produces such high-quality fuels as gaseous methane and liquid methanol. The sources of this fuel are limitless, and need only be collected and processed. “Slash” from lumber, corn stalks, vegetable oil and animal fat, municipal garbage and sewage, feedlot manure – all this and more can be sources of bio-fuels. Household and yard garbage (including leaves and lawn cuttings), when dumped into land fills, decompose anoxically and release vast amounts of methane, which, as a greenhouse gas, is thirty times more damaging than carbon dioxide. (Schneider 21)  But when captured and utilized as a fuel, the combustion products of methane are water and carbon dioxide – and benign CO₂ at that, since the component carbon is gathered and released from the ongoing biotic “carbon cycle,” and not, as with fossil fuels, extracted from geologically sequestered sources.

In short, there is energy all around us. We need only develop and apply the technology to put it to work for us. Still better, we have that technology at hand, and are prevented by vested interests in the fossil fuel economy and their patrons in the government from developing and distributing these benign and “climate friendly” sources of energy.

Foremost among the objections to a conversion to a solar-biofuel-hydrogen economy is cost. Fossil fuels, we are told, are the cheapest source of energy, and as long is this is the case, renewable sources will be excluded by the remorseless logic of the free market.

This argument is specious, for numerous reasons.

First of all, the cost advantage is temporary, to say the least. Now that we have apparently reached the point of peak global oil production, and now that China and India are entering the world petroleum market, the price of oil must increase, suddenly and significantly, as demand surges ahead of supply.

Second, the miserly investment in the research, development, manufacture and infrastructure of renewables is the cause of the high cost of these energy sources, which, in turn, provides an excuse for the failure by the fossil energy establishment (including those oil industry alumni, Bush and Cheney) to look elsewhere for future energy sources. Accordingly,

Third, as the critics of renewable energy cite the non-competitive current costs, they neglect to make projections of future costs which, through advancing research, development and economies of scale are certain to drop drastically. Case in point: the cost of information storage in personal computers. In 1981, when I bought my first personal computer, the salesman tried to entice me to purchase a hard drive. “For only $2000,” he told me, “you can put five megabytes of data on this hard drive.” Last year, I bought a 40 gigabyte hard-drive for $150. – 8,000 times as much storage capacity as the 1981 drive, at about 7% of the cost (in constant dollars). Had automobiles followed the same cost-curve, I could now buy a Hummer for a dollar. While there is no way that alternative energy costs will drop in thirty years as much as computer data storage, they will nonetheless drop dramatically, as in fact they have already. In 1979, solar-power advocate Barry Commoner figured the cost of photo-voltaic electricity to be approximately the same as electricity supplied by a gas powered home generator: $1.63 per kilowatt hour. Residential electricity at the time cost 3.5 cents / kwh. (9 cents in 2004 dollars). As Commoner conceded, “the photovoltaic cell was hardly commercial.” (Commoner, 35)  However, with intervening improvements in technology, photovoltaic electricity is today approaching competitiveness. In the twenty years from 1977 to 1997, the cost of photovoltaic energy fell from $2 /kwh to 18 cents /kwh. (Youngquist, 250)

Finally, the market can, and in fact must, be federally “shaped,” through taxes and subsidies, to ease and hasten the transition from a fossil fuels to a global economy based upon clean and sustainable energy. Free-market absolutists will complain loudly about such “big government interference,” all the while hoping that the public will not notice that industrial agriculture, transportation and distribution systems, and the petroleum industry all benefit from huge government subsidies. It is past time for public officials to act in behalf of the public and future generations, rather than the corporate interests that have “bought” them. If they do so, public funds can be directed to research, development and installation of renewable energy facilities – “priming the pump” to hasten the establishment of an eventually self-sustaining renewable energy industry.

The financial and industrial resources are available to make this transition. The oil companies must redefine themselves as “energy companies”– not as adversaries and competitors of the emerging alternative energy providers, but as facilitators, in search of newer and better energy sources. Some corporations, notably British Petroleum and Shell, are saying as much in their public pronouncements. But such PR declarations are all too often belied by the R&D numbers in the annual reports.

Because the impending end of the petroleum age is a direct threat to national security, a sizeable portion of the military budget should be diverted toward energy independence. For example, the aerospace industry, corporations such as Martin-Marietta, Lockheed, Rockwell and Boeing, with their state of the art facilities for producing aircraft and rocket launchers, are superbly equipped to manufacture high-speed intercity rail systems – by far the most energy efficient mode of transportation and distribution. Anyone who has traveled on Japanese and European trains, as I have, can only be dismayed at the dismal condition of American railroads. (Six years ago I rode the “Chunnel” train from Paris to London – 220 miles – in less than three hours at speeds up to 140 mph).

The United States must take the lead in the transition to renewable energy, for if we do not, we can be assured that Europe and Asia will take that lead, leaving us behind with a declining economy and standard of living, as we desperately cling to an obsolete and uncompetitive technology.

Can industrial civilization, at the level of development and prosperity now achieved in the United States, Europe and Japan, be sustained without the abundant and cheap energy now provided by the fossil fuels? Amory Lovins and his associates at the Rocky Mountain Institute believe that we can – and that we must. In an astonishing and hopeful report, Winning the Oil Endgame, Lovins et al claim that “over the next few decades, the United States can get completely off oil and revitalize its industrial and rural economy.” (Lovins, et al)  Moreover, they propose that this transition to a “soft energy” future can be accomplished profitably by private enterprise. (The 270 page report can be downloaded at no cost at http://www.oilendgame.com/ReadTheBook.html ).

Throughout his thirty year career, Lovins has been widely denounced as a wild-eyed, impractical visionary. But because he has endured for three decades, the passage of time has validated his work. With thorough, peer-reviewed scholarship, Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute present in their “Oil Endgame” report a plausible avenue of escape from the impending economic collapse which must follow the sudden and permanent loss of the fossil energy sources that now sustain industrial civilization. And that is encouraging news, to say the least.

The RMI solution does not bode well for the investors in oil companies, if those companies refuse to develop alternative energy sources. With the future of civilization in the balance, the short-term interests of petroleum industry investors should not be the controlling factor in national and global energy policy. However, the choice between investors vs. civilization is a false dilemma if the oil companies act as energy companies and lead the transition to an economy based upon sustainable energy. Moreover, the petroleum industry will survive the obsolescence of fossil fuels, for there will be a permanent demand for petrochemical products, notably plastics.  “Firms that are quick to adopt innovative technologies and business models,” states the RMI report, “will be the winners of the 21st century; those that deny and resist change will join the dead from the last millenium.” (Lovins, et al, x-xi).

Unfortunately, the Bush-Cheney administration, totally captivated by the short-term interests of the “awl bidness” has given no serious attention and has proposed no significant appropriations in support of the transition to sustainable and non-polluting energy resources. They have set us upon a path to disaster. The Bush Administration, the Republican Congress, the mainstream media, and the American public appear to be utterly unperturbed by this prospect.

“Civilization,” wrote H. G. Wells, “is a race between education and disaster.” At the moment, it appears that the American civilization is staking its entire future on the losing horse in this race.

 

---

REFERENCES

Colbert, Elizabeth: "The Climate of Man (III)," The New Yorker, May 9, 2005

Commoner, Barry:  The Politics of Energy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.

Cottrell, Fred: Energy and Society, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.

Gore, Al: Earth in the Balance, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1992

Partridge, Ernest: "The Oil Trap," The Online Gadfly, August, 2002,  www.igc.org/gadfly/eds/env/oiltrap.htm .

Partridge, Ernest: "The Perils of Panglosism," Global Dialog, Winter, 2002. 
Online version: "Perilous Optimism," The Online Gadfly  www.igc.org/gadfly/papers/cornuc.htm .

Schneider, Stephen H.: Global Warming, New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Wackernagel, Mathis, and William Rees: Our Ecological Footprint, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers,  1996.

Watt, Kenneth E. F.:  "Whole Earth," Earth Day -- The Beginning, New York: Arno Press, 1970.

Youngquist, Walter: Geo-Destinies, Portland, OR: National Book Company,  1997

---

What Can We the People Do About Election Fraud?

Ernest Partridge

April 26, 2005

During the two and a half years that The Crisis Papers has been on the web, we have posted hundreds of articles and links in our 'Election 2004 Fraud' and 'Electoral Integrity'  pages. In addition I have written and published numerous essays about the issue, most recently just two weeks ago. On each occasion, I have received numerous letters telling me 'I'm convinced that the elections are frauds,' then asking 'Now what can I do about it?'

Here is a partial answer. 'Partial,' because if honest and verifiable elections are ever to return to the United States, it will be because this question will be asked relentlessly by an outraged public.

Electoral integrity is arguably the most important political issue to face the American people since the founding of our democracy, as it raises the question of whether, in fact, we still have a democracy. For if, as the skeptics contend, the outcome of our federal 'elections' are decided before a single vote is cast, then the government of the United States no longer '[derives] its just powers from the consent of the governed.' Despite what we are told from Washington, or by the corporate media, this is not a government 'of, by, and for the people.'

The grounds for suspicion about the integrity of our elections are simple, straightforward, and undisputed. In federal elections, thirty percent of the votes are cast, and eighty percent of the votes are regionally compiled, in machines: (a) utilizing secret software, (b) producing no independent record of the votes (e.g. Paper trails), and ( c ) manufactured by active members and supporters of the Republican Party. In sum, the system in place is effectively designed, either deliberately or accidentally, to facilitate fraud.

Moreover, remedies for these shortcomings are readily available, and in fact, in use. These include: (a) a requirement that software ('source codes') be made public (as in Australia), (b) production of a separate paper ballot to be inspected by the voter (as in Nevada). In addition, voting machines could be selected at random, during elections, and examined for accuracy. And central compiling could be done 'in parallel' by two distinct and independent methodologies.

These 'black box' voting machines, as now in use, inevitably raise questions as to the legitimacy of the elections. For if the system now in place is as honest as 'the winners' (i.e., the Republicans) tell us it is, why do they oppose these guarantees? Would not the winners want these suspicions to be put to rest? Why, then, do they doggedly oppose reforms that would validate the honesty of our elections? Causes one to wonder, does it not?

Add to this the accumulating evidence that our elections have in fact been 'fixed.' This includes: (a) anecdotal evidence from voters -- e.g. malfunctioning screens, 'lost' registrations, etc. (b) public demonstrations of simulated vote fraud, (for example, the CNBC demonstration by Bev Harris and Howard Dean -- see here and here).  (c) impossible and improbable vote totals -- e.g. more votes reported than registered voters, and 'negative' vote totals. ( d ) exit poll discrepancies – accurate polls in precincts with validated (e.g. paper) ballots, inaccurate polls in precincts with 'black-box' machine voting and all discrepancies favoring one candidate or party. (e) statistical analyses of these anomalies. Because the evidence of machine voting fraud has been extensively published elsewhere, I will not elaborate here. (For a list of websites and articles dealing with voting fraud, see The Crisis Papers pages on  'Election Fraud 2004' and 'Electoral Integrity").


So what is to be done about this outrage?

The media problem. Don’t expect help from the mainstream media – at least, not without some persistent and creative pressure from the public. The issue of voting fraud is virtually absent from the media, except for occasional debunkings of the skeptics. There are reports that 'top down' orders have been given to media staff to say and write nothing about the issue, and that violations of these orders are 'career-enders.' True or not, the media behaves as if such orders have been given. There is a black hole of reporting on ballot integrity. As for investigative reporting, fagetaboutit.

What to do? We begin by acknowledging this problem, and then proceed to locate the 'pressure points' that might budge the media from its negligence.

Ask an ordinary citizen, 'Who are the sellers and the customers, and what is the product, of the broadcast mass media?' and you will likely be told that the TV and radio networks are the sellers, the audience are the customers, and the programming is the product. Wrong!  In fact, the media corporations are the sellers, the corporate sponsors are the customers, and the attention ('eyes') of the public is the product. If you doubt this, then just follow the money. It flows from sponsors to the broadcasters.

So therein is the pressure point: if the public withdraws the 'product,' namely its attention, the public can 'starve the beast.' This is the crucial difference between the media in the Soviet Union and the media in United States. The Soviet Commissars didn’t care a whit if Pravda, Izvestiya and Gostelradio failed to turn a profit, so long as they continued to spew out the party line. In the US, profit is the sine qua non – the whole point of having a media at all.

Case in point: The Sinclair Broadcasting 'Stolen Honor' fiasco. As you likely recall, in the closing days of the Presidential campaign, Sinclair scheduled 'Stolen Honor,' a smear of John Kerry’s Vietnam service. Following a public outcry, Sinclair withdrew the program. And why? A sudden realization of civic responsibility? Ya gotta be kidding! Fear of offending the public? Yes, but not directly. In fact, the Sinclair management, solid supporters of George Bush and the GOP, buckled from pressure from the stockholders. The offended public was removing its eyes from the Sinclair TV screens. Hence lower ratings and lower profits. Sinclair management was ungently reminded that their job was not to campaign for George Bush, their job was to provide a return on the stockholders’ investments. Failing that, management might quite properly be sued, or at least booted out, at the next stockholders’ meeting.

The immediate target of our protest is not the mainstream media at large, it is the mainstream news media. And that beast is starving even today. The credibility of the corporate news media is in free-fall. Timothy Maier reports that:

For two decades polls increasingly have indicated public dismay at the spin and fantasies of the press. In fact, a recent Gallup Poll says Americans rate the trustworthiness of journalists at about the level of politicians and as only slightly more credible than used-car salesmen. The poll suggests that only 21 percent of Americans believe journalists have high ethical standards, ranking them below auto mechanics but tied with members of Congress. More precisely, the poll notes that only one in four people believe what they read in the newspapers. Chicago Tribune Editor Charles M. Madigan may have put it best when he offered this advice: "If you are a journalist, you should probably just assume that you come across as a liar." ... The study also points out that there has been a rapid decline in newspaper readership since the 1980s, with slightly more than half of Americans, 54 percent, reading a newspaper during the week.

The prospects for the future are grim, as the younger cohorts are particularly cool to the media. In a recent speech,  Rupert Murdoch (no less!) noted that the 18-34 age group was abandoning newspapers for the internet. Furthermore, he reported that 'only 9%' of this group describe us as trustworthy, a scant 8% find us useful, and only 4% think we’re entertaining.

Professional journalists find these statistics alarming. On the contrary, I find them very hopeful. The mainstream news media have richly deserved this public contempt, as they have increasingly become purveyors of trivia and conduits of official right-wing propaganda, and decreasingly independent investigative watchdogs serving the public interest. The public, especially the younger cohort, knows this and is now looking elsewhere for its news.

With the abandonment of responsible broadcast journalism in favor of trivial info-tainment,' there is a latent demand for the 'old-style' reporting and investigations of 'pros' such as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Woodward and Bernstein. Surely such an enterprise would be commercially viable. As in the 'Field of Dreams,' if they build it the public will come.

And so the news media, desperate for recovery, need to be told, time and again, that if they want our attention, they had better declare their independence and get back to the business of investigating and reporting significant public issues. And they might start with the most important issue of all: the integrity of our ballots.

Our job: tell the media, and their sponsors, that we no longer trust their news reporting, and are now looking elsewhere. And while we are at it, we should collect and distribute the names and addresses of media and sponsors, and encourage still others to voice their complaints. (The Democratic Underground’s outstanding 'Local Media Blaster' can direct you to local and national media addresses. See also The Crisis Papers’ 'Activist’s Page').

Progressive Voices on the Commercial Broadcast Media. Air American Radio is a good start – but merely a start. A progressive cable news channel – an 'Anti-FOX' -- is long overdue, and as the past election campaign demonstrated, 'start-up' funds are available from such major sources as George Soros and Warren Buffet.

The Internet and Alternative Media. Unless and until the mainstream news media acknowledge and deal with the ballot integrity issue, the progressive internet and the alternative media must be supported and encouraged to publicize the problem of ballot fraud. In your public and private e-mails, include links to the websites and the particular articles that deal with the issue. Download, print, and copy these articles, and pass them around to your friends and associates.

Recruit the 'Allies.' Regrettably, many prominent progressives are not convinced that the past election was 'fixed.' Among them, Paul Begala, Al Franken, Arianna Huffington, and Bernie Sanders. To this day, the Democratic Party is mute on the issue, as is the progressive think-tank, The Center for American Progress. Demand that they examine the evidence and challenge them to refute it. And if they can’t, tell them to join the fight.

Where are the Books?  Effective political movements have a supporting literature. The American Revolution had Tom Paine and 'Common Sense.' The Civil War had 'Uncle Tom’s Cabin.' The supporting documents of the electoral reform movement are compelling, but they are diffuse. The defining and catalyzing book – the book that is held aloft at the public meetings, cited in the media and in the letters to Congress – that work is desperately needed and overdue. Perhaps it is still in progress, or even now at the publishers. If not, will some genius (and our cause has several) please write that book!

Perhaps such a book exists, but no American publisher dares to print it. In that case, the author might look abroad and import it. (And what a message that would convey about the state of our 'free press'!)  In the meantime, or instead, the book should be put on the Internet.

Send a Message to the Democrats. Those who contributed to the Democrats and the Kerry Campaign are surely receiving numerous solicitations for donations. Find them, take out a red felt pen, and write something like: 'Unless the Democratic Party addresses the problem of voting fraud, its time and my contribution will be wasted. Secure my vote, and I will once again contribute generously. Until then, nada!'

Demand Action on the Local Level. As Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell dramatically demonstrated, federal elections are administered on the state level. Election fraud is a violation of both federal and state laws. Obviously neither Attorney General Gonzales nor the Republican Congress will touch the issue. However, there must surely be a state with a Democratic Governor and/or Legislature and/or Attorney General that could investigate, indict, and prosecute some culprits involved in the Great Election Robbery of 2004. And if elected officials refuse to take the initiative, citizen groups and defeated candidates should file law suits. With the threat of perjury and imprisonment, and the prosecutor’s power of investigative discovery, some culprit somewhere might 'break,' then another and another, whereupon the whole rotten system of fraud and cover-up might collapse.  It happened to Richard Nixon, and it can happen again.

The voting fraud issue is a sleeping giant that the Busheviks, with the determined complicity of the mainstream media, are desperately trying to keep asleep. Few appreciate just how daunting a task this is. As we noted at the outset of this essay, the opportunity for fraud is known and undisputed. The evidence published, available, and compelling. There is no refutation other than 'trust us,' 'get over it,' 'let’s move on,' 'don’t be so paranoid,' and other such irrelevancies.

Bush, the GOP and their media allies hope that if they ignore the issue and direct public attention elsewhere, the sleeping giant will not stir. But if I were Bush, Rove, Cheney, or the rest, I’d be afraid – I’d be very afraid. For now Bush’s approval ratings are falling even as gas prices, interests rates, and the consumer price index rise. And all these may be harbingers of much worse to come. As the dire economic costs to almost everybody of the Bushevik plunder become more apparent, the American public will become ever more receptive to the idea that they were criminally robbed of their franchise in (at least) the past three federal elections, that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress lack legitimacy, and that the American people are no longer, in any authentic sense, 'citizens' of a free society.

Those of us who are aware of the electoral crime against the American people must steadfastly sound the alarm and arouse the sleeping giant.

 

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

---

Means, Motive, Opportunity

 

Ernest Partridge,

April 17, 2005

 

The 2006 mid-term election -- a scenario:

By late summer, 2006, the United States is in a desperate condition. Following the collapse of the dollar in international currency markets, there has been a cascade of business failures and mortgage foreclosures, and a precipitous rise in unemployment, as the US economy slides inexorably into a depression. Meanwhile, the June 2005 American attack on Iran and the continuing war in Iraq has made the United States an international pariah state; thus the community of nations shows no inclination whatever to rescue the United States from its economic collapse.

In the run-up to the 2006 election, the mainstream media has once again fallen in line behind the Republicans, blaming the depression on the Clinton Administration, al Qaeda, and/or betrayal by 'the Old Europe.' The crimes and outrages of the Bush/GOP syndicate have been unreported by the media, as Democratic war veterans running for office against GOP draft dodgers have once again been castigated as 'unpatriotic.'

For their part, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the religious right have proclaimed that these economic and diplomatic catastrophes manifest God's judgment on the American people for their toleration of gays, abortion, the ACLU, the teaching of evolution, and independent judges.

This time, the public is unconvinced by the GOP propaganda, as massive protest demonstrations erupt throughout the country. Finally fed up with the lies and greed of the GOP, and finally aware of just how much their livelihood and their future has been plundered by Bushenomics, more than two-thirds of the voters are about to go to the polls determined to throw out the Republican Congress.

While a few honest polls forecast a landslide victory for the Democrats, most of these polls have not been published.

The Republican-owned and Republican-coded 'black-box' voting machines once again perform as intended, and the Republicans retain control of Congress.

The astonished and disappointed public is once again told to 'get over it.'

Beyond that, my crystal ball becomes cloudy.


The implied question in this scenario is clear: If GOP partisans own the voting machines, count the votes, refuse to allow independent validation of the tallies, and if the Republicans choose to take advantage of this opportunity for fraud, is there any way -- any way at all -- that the Democrats could win the 2006 election and regain control of Congress?

If not, then why do the Democrats persist in looking hopefully to 2006 - 'the next time.' After all, 2002 and 2004 were 'the next time,' and there is abundant evidence that in both cases, the peoples' will was reversed by the Diebold and ES&S black boxes.

Clearly, the Democratic Party and its allies look forward to 'victory' in 2006 because they are in denial: they simply cannot bring themselves to face the compelling evidence that in the United States today, the electoral process is rigged, thus the will of the people is irrelevant to the governance of the nation, and thus the United States has ceased to be a democracy.

Neither the 2004 Democratic Party candidate, John Kerry, nor the Party's Chairman, Howard Dean, will publicly entertain the very notion that 'the fix is in.' The issue of electoral fraud is simply not on the agenda of the Democratic National Committee. Prominent progressives such as Vermont's Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Paul Begala, and Arianna Huffington insist that Bush won the election, 'fair and square,' and that the 'anomalies' in Florida and Ohio were not sufficient to have determined the outcome. As for the media, actor and activist Peter Coyote reports  that there is a 'lock-down' order throughout the mainstream media that the issue of electoral integrity is simply not to be mentioned. Violation of the order can be a career-ender. And in fact, with the exception of Keith Olberman, one is hard-pressed to identify anyone in the MSM who has mentioned the issue.

And so today, political discourse is captivated by the assumption that in 2004 George Bush won a majority of both the popular and the electoral votes, and thus, unlike 2000, is now the indisputably legitimate President of the United States. In addition, it is assumed without debate that the Republicans have legitimate control of the Congress. The 'success' of the Republicans and the 'failure' of the Democrats is now the 'frame' within which all political discussion resides.

Suppose instead that in 2002 and 2004 every intended vote had been correctly counted, and as a result John Kerry was now the President, and the Democrats controlled the Senate and quite possibly the House as well. The pundits would now be writing about the resurgence of liberalism and the Democratic Party, and, at the same time, speculating as to the causes of the 'failure' of The Right, and the public's rejection of George Bush.

The evidence of massive election fraud in 2004 is compelling, and continues to accumulate, despite the media 'lock-down.' Just last week, a group of university statisticians released a report which calculates at a million to one the probability that the discrepancy between the exit polls (indicating a Kerry victory) and the final results was due to random error. Because I have discussed at length the evidence for fraud in the 2004 election, I will not repeat it here. But for those who wish to have yet another look at the evidence, see The Crisis Papers page, 'Was Election 2004 a Fraud?'  Suffice to say that as the evidence accumulates, the media remains mute and the public remains unconcerned.

Clear, contrary evidence that the election returns were accurate and the outcome legitimate is simply non-existent. This is so, because the election procedure was designed not to provide validation. The software source-codes were secret, there was no paper record, and there was no parallel validation procedure for the centralized compilation of voting totals. To the repeated plea for validation, all that the voting-machine technicians could say is 'trust us' -- 'us' being partisan Republicans who built, coded, and operated the 'black box' voting machines.

Aside from the now-familiar GOP retorts of 'get over it!' and 'don't be paranoid,' the crux of the case of electoral legitimacy is 'they wouldn't dare rig the election,' or alternatively, 'the Republicans have too much respect for our democracy to do such a thing.'

With much less provocation than this, the citizens of Ukraine and the Republic of Georgia demanded, and got, new elections, which reversed the outcomes of the corrupted elections.

As most 'CSI' and 'Law and Order' viewers are well aware, in their search for suspects, detectives look first of all for 'means, motive and opportunity.'

The 'means' for election fraud are so obvious and indisputable that even the Republicans will not dispute them. The 'means,' of course, are the machines and secret software of the Diebold and ES&S corporations that recorded more than 30% of the votes cast, and 80% of the votes centrally compiled, in the 2004 Presidential election.

The lack of an independent paper record or any other mode of verification, the minuscule chance of discovery, and the accommodating silence of the media provides the 'opportunity.'

There remains the question of motive.

Remember, first of all, that 2004 was not an ordinary Presidential re-election contest whereby  the incumbent, should he lose, graciously concedes to the winner and then retires to play golf, give speeches at one-hundred grand a pop, or even do sufficient good deeds to eventually win a Nobel Peace Prize.

In this election, the stakes were much higher. The Republicans gathered and invested a half billion dollars in order to win, and they did so for good reason. In Bush's first term, billions of dollars were transferred from the poor, the middle class, the federal treasury, and future generations, to the super-wealthy, with many billions more to come in a second Bush term. Many of Bush's friends and benefactors, possibly including his Vice President, have engaged in massive graft and bribery -- for example, hundreds of millions of dollars of Iraq reconstruction funds 'lost' by Halliburton, and billions of dollars of California utility bills swindled by Enron. Still more crimes: Condi Rice's perjury before the 9/11 commission, the 'outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, Tom DeLay's attempted bribery of Congressman Nick Smith, and the worst crime of all, the theft of the national elections of 2000, 2002, and now 2004.  God only knows what else a Democratic Attorney General and Democratic Congressional investigations might uncover.

The Bush syndicate did not simply wish to stay in office. They had an even greater motive to stay out of the Federal slammer.

So it comes down to this: In the 2004 election, the Bush team and the Republican party had a treasure trove of means and opportunity dropped in their laps. They could, if they chose, 'key in' any election result they wanted; for example, they could 'swing' a Senate race by nine points or a Governor's race by fifteen points (as it appears they did in Georgia, 2002). And, if the 2004 early exit polls were in fact accurate, in the Presidential race it now appears that they could drop the Democrat's percentage by five points, and boost the Republican's total by the same amount. Thanks to the secret codes and 'back-door access' to the voting machines, and thanks in addition to the cooperation of the corporate media, they could do all this without fear of detection.

Mindful of the record of this Administration during the past four years, the enormous personal and financial consequences, as noted above, of an election defeat, and the likelihood of that defeat as indicated by the polls, can we really expect them to have said, in effect, 'yes, we could steal this election without consequence, but it wouldn't be right, so we choose to be honest'?

If you believe this, then I have a stack of Enron stock that I'd like to sell you.

Clearly, the Bush syndicate had abundant means, motive and opportunity to commit a crime against the state, in a word treason, and there is compelling evidence that they have done just that. Neither the enforced silence of the media nor the cowardly inaction of the Democrats mitigate this evidence by one iota.

The over-arching question, then, is 'when will the public wake up to this silent coup d'etat?'

For the issue before us is no longer the protection of American democracy. It's too late for that. The issue instead is the restoration of American democracy.

And at the moment, that issue is very much in doubt.

 

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

---

Why should I pay for someone else's education?

 

Ernest Partridge

April 7, 2005

Is it unfair to require those who have no children in the public schools to pay school taxes?

The libertarian-right apparently believes that it is. In its 2000 platform, the Libertarian Party proclaimed:

We advocate the complete separation of education and State... We condemn compulsory education laws. We further support immediate reduction of tax support for schools, and removal of the burden of school taxes from those not responsible for the education of children.

Furthermore, Christian fundamentalists are disinclined to send their children to public schools, often preferring to send them to 'Christian academies' or to teach them at home. They opt out of public education in order to protect their children from 'corruption through such secular ideas such as evolution, historical geology, or even tolerance of contrary religious beliefs. If they choose to withdraw their children from the public schools, why should the fundamentalists be required to pay school taxes?

Without a doubt, if, as the libertarians propose, 'the burden of school taxes' is confined to those 'responsible for the education of children' (presumably their own children), the quality of public education will be severely degraded, while, at the same time the burden of school costs on families with school-age children will be greatly increased -- so much so, that poor families will be hard-pressed to support the schooling of their children through High School, and middle-class families will find it difficult to afford college education for their children. In short, without broad-based financial support for public education, the education-level of our next generation will decline precipitously.

So if asked why I should pay for the education of other peoples' children, I have a simple and straightforward answer: 'Because I prefer to live in the company of educated neighbors, and in a country with educated citizens.'

If I were a businessman or an entrepreneur, setting out to establish an innovative and high-tech business enterprise, I would add: 'I pay school taxes so that our country might have an educated work-force, without which my enterprise could not possibly succeed.'

The nineteenth-century Sociologist, L. T. Hobhouse, put it well when he wrote:

The organizer of industry who thinks he has 'made' himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order -- a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin. (Via Paul Samuelson, Newsweek, December 30, 1974)

Thus Ayn Rand's totally self-made and self directed John Galt type of entrepreneur is a myth. As even Bill Gates must appreciate, there is no MicroSoft without the myriad of publicly educated 'micro-serfs' on the payroll.

Another reason why I should support public education, at all levels from Kindergarten through university graduate schools, is that this support is 'payback' to all those who paid for my own public education. This payback is quite justly assessed and taxed throughout my lifetime, since the advantages of that public education are with me throughout my life.

But this is a paradoxical sort of 'payback,' since I cannot directly 'return the favor' to my patrons. Those individuals who built and sustained the institutions that I attended, and those teachers whom I encountered in innumerable classrooms, are either dead or in their dotage. My debt is payable to abstractions: to society and civilization. By this I mean, payable to those fragile institutions that secure, sustain and enrich the lives of us all: our Constitutional government, our laws, civic peace and tolerance, our common history, our sciences and arts. I 'pay back' those who paid for my education by preserving those institutions and by enhancing the public good.

'The public good?' The libertarian will have none of it. For, as Ayn Rand once wrote, '; there is no such entity as 'the tribe' or 'the public'; the tribe (or the public or society) is only a number of individual men.' ('What is Capitalism?', 1965).

Accordingly, the libertarian argues, educational institutions exist only to benefit each individual person who is educated, and thus should be paid for only by that individual's family.

This is an absurdity that only a doctrinaire libertarian could believe. For in fact, the education of each individual benefits the public at large, and thus should be supported by the public at large.

When I entered the University campuses, first as a student and later as a professor, I found magnificent institutions at my disposal: buildings and grounds, faculties, libraries, and traditions -- all these supported, refined, added-upon over the decades at great public expense, only a small fraction of which consisted of student tuition and fees. Yet the returns of this public investment to the public are incalculably lavish: scientific advances issuing from university laboratories, the accumulation and integration of knowledge from the many separate disciplines, the public service of the scholars, teachers, engineers, business people, lawyers, doctors, etc. that graduate from these public institutions.

There is no better evidence of the social and economic benefits of public education, than the GI Bill of Rights (1944) that offered free college education to veterans of World War II. This bill, steadfastly opposed by the Congressional Republicans at the time, was the foundation of the middle class that emerged from that war, and a springboard to the unprecedented economic growth that followed. Thus the GI Bill is regarded by many as the most significant federal legislation of the twentieth century.

Universal support of public education affirms the principle that We the People of the United States are a community, and not, as the libertarian right would have us believe, a mere aggregate of disconnected, self-interested individuals and families, the sum of whose private activity is somehow mysteriously, and without need of planning or management, transformed into the public good. On the contrary, the fabric of our national community has been woven, to a significant degree, by the public schools as they took in immigrants from numerous nations and transformed them, in a single generation, into Americans -- e pluribus unum. They did so by teaching a common language, our national history, and our founding political principles. Of late, the teaching of history and civics in the public schools has been downgraded, and we are now paying a terrible price for this neglect, as a generation of Americans emerges that is ignorant of their heritage and of their rights, and thus ill prepared and ill-motivated to protect them when threatened.

Public education is now under attack as never before. George Bush promises to 'Leave no Child Behind,' and then withdraws funding from the Act bearing that name. Karl Rove attacks the teachers' union, The National Education Association (called by former Education Secretary, Ron Paige, 'a terrorist organization'), because of the teacher' traditional support of the Democratic Party. 'Voucher systems' threaten to draw gifted students, and students from affluent families, out of the public schools, leaving behind the poor and disadvantaged. And so-called 'taxpayers' revolts' are starving the schools of essential funding, often despite the wishes of the public. For example, in my own community, a majority of voters have recently supported two proposals to increase school funding, only to have those proposals defeated by a law that requires a two-thirds majority to increase tax assessments. This law, the so-called Jarvis Initiative of 1979, is believed by many to be the primary cause of the decline of the once-magnificent California public school system, and the University of California, once the undisputed leader in public higher education.

Because we are all continuing beneficiaries of our system of public education, that system deserves universal support - whether or not we happen to have children currently in school. Our very freedom depends upon a flourishing educational establishment, for, as Jefferson correctly observed, 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."

Or as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote in his Aims of Education:

In the conditions of modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea, can move back the finger of fate. Today we maintain ourselves. Tomorrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be pronounced on the uneducated. --posted 04.07.05
 

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, 'The Online Gadfly' (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, 'The Crisis Papers' (www.crisispapers.org).

---

For Tax Refuseniks: A Modest Proposal

 

Ernest Partridge

Posted March 23, 2005

What people earn is their money. Seventy-two years after its inception, what is our Federal tax system? It is a system that yields great amounts of revenue, even greater amounts of disorder, discontent and disobedience. [Tax cheating] is not considered bad behavior. After all, goes this thinking, what's wrong with cheating a system that is itself a cheat? That isn't a sin, it's a duty! Ronald Reagan NPR, May 30, 1985

The Proposal:  If  the "tax refuseniks" are so opposed to paying their taxes, let's make all tax payment voluntary.

Grover Norquist of "Americans for Tax Reform" proclaims that he wants to 'drown government in the bathtub,' by which he must mean abolish government services. What gives government the right, we are often asked, to seize our property through taxation? 'It's your money!' Bob Dole shouted. And George Bush repeatedly asks, 'who is better qualified to spend your money? You, or the government?'  To the libertarian-right, tax payments for any purpose other then the protection of individual rights to life, liberty and property, is theft.

No one likes to pay taxes. But for that matter, no one likes to pay the mortgage on one's house, utility bills, or car payments. However, we all understand that if we do not make these payments, we will be evicted from our homes, or the electricity will be shut off, or our cars will be repossessed -- and justly so.

So here is my proposal: Make all tax payment voluntary. If Grover Norquist and all other like-minded individuals find tax-paying so onerous, then they may be excused from paying taxes.

The only provision is that if they do so, they are no longer entitled to the services that are supported by taxes.

To wit:

• They may no longer use the public highways.
   
• In case of fire, they can not call the Fire Department to save their homes.
   
• In case of home invasion, armed robbery or other criminal threats, they can not call the police for help.
   
• They can not sue for damages in court.
   
• They can no longer purchase prescription drugs (certified safe and effective by the FDA).
   
• They can no longer purchase meat and dairy products that have been inspected by the Dept. Of Agriculture.
   
• They can not visit the National Parks or National Forests.
   
• They can not purchase airline tickets, (since that industry is regulated by the FAA).
   
• Their bank accounts may not be protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
   
• For that matter, they cannot use US currency, since it is guaranteed by the Federal Government. Instead, they will have to conduct all transactions by barter.

And that's just the beginning of a long list.

Any takers?

(Of course, it will be impossible to deprive the tax-refuseniks of all government services -- in some cases they will, of necessity, be 'free riders.' For example, the air they breathe will be cleaner due to the enforcement of clean air standards, paid for by other citizens. Similarly, they will be safer from foreign invasion thanks to a military paid for by others).

All tax refuseniks who are caught using these services, will be assessed charges. In other words, they will be required to pay their taxes.

Which kinda leaves things pretty much where they were to begin with, doesn't it?


Politicians like Bob Dole and George Bush, keep telling us that taxes are 'your money!' -- in other words, that we are entitled to keep it. Activists such as Grover Norquist and his 'American for Tax Reform' demand that taxes be cut, and cut, and cut again, until, as Norquist puts it, government is reduced to the size where we can 'drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,' which I take to mean, eliminate government. All this, notwithstanding the obvious and manifest public benefits that are 'purchased' by tax revenues. 

And yet, somehow, this subversive nonsense strikes a responsive chord among our fellow citizens. Why is this?

To be sure, many citizens are not opposed to paying their taxes, per se. Their complaint is that so much of their tax assessment is lost to waste, fraud and abuse. But this complaint is legitimately voiced by all citizens, regardless of political persuasion -- right, left, and center. Everyone, that is, except those scoundrels who benefit from that waste, fraud and abuse. The solution, however, is not to abolish taxes, for the above listed services must still be supported. The answer is improved law enforcement and harsh penalties. Put bluntly, where there is waste, fraud and abuse, we should root it out and then nail the bastards -- beginning, appropriately, with Dick Cheney's pals at Haliburton who seem to have 'lost' a few billions 'our' money in Iraq.

Next, there is the issue of the fair distribution of the tax burden. The traditional principle of tax assessment is that it be based upon the ability to pay. It is self-evidently true that the value of a constant sum of money, say a thousand dollars, is far greater to a poor person than to a wealthy person. If a Wal Mart clerk loses a grand, she and her children will go without food for several days. If Bill Gates loses that amount, it is of no consequence whatever to him. Hence the graduated income tax rates, and the inherent injustice of Steve Forbes' 'flat tax.'  Similarly, the wealthy individual's income from investments should not be taxed less than the poor workers' salaried income. And yet, more and more, the tax burden is shifting away from the wealthy to the poor and middle class. Once again, this is legitimate reason for complaint and reform. But meanwhile, those aforementioned public services must be paid for.

Even so, there is in this country a tradition of the clever and resourceful tax evader as some sort of a hero. By hiring a coterie of skillful accountants and lawyers to seek out loopholes, or by setting up phony off-shore corporations, this enterprising soul is admired by many for striking a blow against the despised and unworthy 'big government.' In fact, he is transferring his tax obligation to the rest of us, the honest taxpayers. Somehow, too many of us seem to forget as he evades his tax responsibility, legally or otherwise, he continues to take advantages of the services paid for by the rest of us: the roads and bridges, the protection of his property and person by the police and fire departments, the knowledge and skill of his workers, most of whom were educated at public expense. Some hero!

Next month, as you fill out your IRS 1040 Form, or write a check to the county to pay your property tax, or add on the sales taxes on your purchases, think of what you are paying for with those taxes -- the roads, schools, public safety, safe food and drugs, secure investments, parks and museums, clean air and water, and so much more. And if you are annoyed by your tax burden, direct your anger, not at the government which provides these services, but at the tax cheats and the politicians who write the tax laws that benefit their 'sponsors' -- their campaign contributors.

'Government' is not the culprit -- 'the problem,' as Ronald Reagan put it. The authentic villains are the free-loaders who 'purchase' the tax loopholes and the sweetheart government contracts, and who thus leave it to the rest us to pay for the vital public services of which all of us, honest and dishonest alike, are the beneficiaries.

Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, 'The Online Gadfly' (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, 'The Crisis Papers' (www.crisispapers.org).

---

The Language Trap

 

Ernest Partridge

Posted March 6, 2005

 

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many things. 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master -- that's all.' Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass.

The Right has not only captured all branches of our government and much of our media, it has also largely succeeded in defining the terms of our political discourse. Thus, a progressive who engages in political debate while failing to appreciate this fact and to deal with it, is vulnerable to serious tactical errors. The progressive is thus, in effect, carelessly agreeing to 'play the game' in the opponents' ball-park and by the opponent's rules. Accordingly, casual and uncritical use of terms such as 'liberal' and 'conservative,' and 'right' and 'left,' as they have come to be understood in the mass media and thence in everyday conversation, leads one carelessly to concede some of The Right's basic assumptions. Sadly, most well-intentioned liberal politicians and pundits seem to be unaware of this, and have therefore fallen into the semantic trap. They need not and should not do so.

The language trap should be familiar to progressives. Noam Chomsky has sounded a warning for years, and George Lakoff's work on 'framing' has received a great deal of well-deserved attention. And yet, amazingly, progressives continue to fall into the right-wing traps, carelessly applying The Right's preferred self-description 'conservative' (it isn't), and referring to themselves with the much maligned word, 'liberal.' It is past time for the progressives to regain control of the English language. After all, it's their language too.

George Orwell gave us fair warning of how language can be used as a political weapon. In the appendix to his novel, 1984 ('The Principles of Newspeak') he writes:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the [Party's] world-view and mental habits ... , but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought - that is, a thought diverging from the principles of [the Party] - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words, and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings... .Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought...

One must suppose that former History professor (and ousted GOP House Speaker), Newton Gingrich, Ph.D, had Orwell's 'Newspeak' in mind, when he concocted the infamous GOPAC memo, 'Language: A Key Mechanism of Control'.


'Conservative' and 'Liberal.'

The progressive opposition must break the habit of applying the word 'conservative' to the right wing  except with 'warning quotes' or with such qualifiers as 'so-called'  They must do so because (so-called) 'conservatives,' aren't. That is to say, the historically conventional meaning of the word 'conservative' does not apply to the program and dogma of the self-described 'conservatives' of today's right-wing.

Here's how Webster's Unabridged (Second Edition) defines 'conservative.'

The practice of preserving what is established; disposition to oppose change in established institutions and methods.

Up to the time of Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, 'conservatives' had traditionally advocated small government, non-interference with personal lives, distrust of centralized federal power, fiscal responsibility (i.e., balanced budgets), restrained influence and use of the military, a judiciary guided by precedent, non-aggressive foreign policy, due process of law, and the protection of and adherence to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A moment's reflection will confirm that all of these traditional precepts of 'conservatism' have been openly violated by the self-described 'conservative' Republican party and the self-described 'conservative' administration of George W. Bush.

And yet, having discarded the content of 'conservatism,' The Right steadfastly retains the label.

But where The Right leads, the progressives need not follow. Instead, the progressives should refer to The Right as 'the regressives' with the hope that the term will soon 'catch on' in political discourse. Fortunately, I am not alone with this proposal.  (See Green, Podvin, Terich  and Spivak).

The Right is 'regressive,' in the sense that their program proposes to take us back, economically, to a time before The New Deal, and even before the Progressive reforms of Theodore Roosevelt  back to the late nineteenth-century Gilded Age' of unrestrained capitalism. With their rejection of the separation of church and state, of due process of law and of Constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, there are some regressives who would take us back to before the founding of our Republic.


The trouble with (the word) 'Liberalism.' In numerous public opinion polls, when a sampling of American voters are asked to identify their political persuasion as 'conservative,' 'moderate' or 'liberal,' the answers generally appear in that order  with 'conservative' first, and 'liberal' a poor third.

And yet, when that sampling of American citizens are asked their opinions as to the content (with the word 'liberal' discretely hidden), most liberal programs come out well ahead. Specifically, most Americans support public education, progressive taxation, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, environmental protection, civil rights for minorities, non-discrimination for minorities and women, the United Nations, and the observance of international law.

So it appears that the decades of unrelenting media attacks on the word 'liberalism' have had a telling effect. And yet public support of the program of liberalism has survived quite well.

It follows that The Right has attacked a 'straw man'  a caricature  as 'the liberals' have been falsely identified as 'bleeding hearts,' anti-guns and anti-God. And Ann Coulter has no hesitation in condemning liberalism as 'treason.'

Once again, Webster's Unabridged tells us how far the propaganda of The Right has strayed from conventional American English usage. For there, we find the following definition of 'Liberal:'

From the latin, liberalis  of or pertaining to a freeman. Favoring reform or progress, as in religion, education, etc.; specifically, favoring political reforms tending toward democracy and personal freedom for the individual. Progressive.

That definition rather nicely characterizes the aforementioned liberal program.

In the face of The Right's smearing of the good name of 'liberalism,' what is the poor liberal to do? Many worthy liberals are determined to restore the word 'liberalism' to its rightful place as a respectable and respected term of political discourse. While I sympathize with the sentiments that motivate such effort, I can not recommend it. There are far more important battles to wage. While the liberal program is worthy of defense, the label 'liberal' has been irredeemably besmirched by the decades of right-wing assault. Far better to shed the label, like a soiled garment, and protect the program by awarding it a new label: 'progressive.' 'Liberalism' is a mere word  it's the program that matters. For, as fair Juliet wisely asked, 'what's in a name?  a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.'

And so I propose that henceforth the word we apply to the tradition and program of the left, should be 'progressive.'


The Right' and 'The Left'

What, then, of the familiar political labels, 'the left' and 'the right.'

These terms have also been distorted in recent political discourse, and pose problems for the progressives. The origin of the dichotomy is unremarkable and politically neutral: the terms were originally derived from the seating in the early nineteenth-century French Assembly of Deputies. But today, 'left' is associated with Socialism and Communism, and the word connotes 'sinister.' (Old English and Old French, 'sinistre'  on the left hand). In contrast, 'the right' connotes, well, 'right'  i.e., good, proper, even 'righteous.' I have often been told that it is no accident that 'conservatism' is referred to as 'the right.' In fact, it is exactly that: an accident. And yet the right/left terminology bears a moral connotation, to the disadvantage of 'the left.'

For all that, I believe that the terms should be retained, albeit cautiously, for they serve an essential function in political discourse for which there is no available substitute. In the jargon of analytic philosophy, 'right' and 'left' function denotatively. They indicate ("point to') individuals, groups, organizations, the unifying qualities of which ('designations') might be difficult or even impossible to enumerate. For example, 'the right' refers to libertarians, free-market absolutists, neo-conservatives, and many (most?) Christian fundamentalists. What, if anything, can be said to be common to all these, other then their self-identification as members of 'the right'?


In Conclusion:

We end as we began: with a recognition that the regressive-right has selected, and still worse, defined, the pivotal vocabulary of today's political debates. Accordingly, if the progressive-left continues to accept this vocabulary intact and uncritically, with all morally charged and historically inaccurate connotations, then the progressives will engage in these debates at great disadvantage, for by so doing they will have conceded without warrant many of the hidden assumptions and much of the agenda of The Right.  In George Lakoff's words, they will have been "framed."

Just as The Right has chosen the terms of their debate, the left is equally entitled to choose its own. Furthermore, the left has the advantage that their chosen vocabulary has a foundation in the established usage of the English language.

The upshot proposal: (a) Maintain the 'right/left' distinction, but cautiously. (b) Reject The Right's historically inaccurate self-description of 'conservative,' and refer to The Right as 'The Regressives.' (c) Drop the abused word 'liberal' and replace it with 'progressive.'

Many additional words appropriated by The Right deserve careful scrutiny  among them, 'freedom,' 'liberty,' 'rights,' not to mention the Orwellian labels for the Bush programs: 'clear skies,' 'healthy forests,' 'compassionate conservatism,' 'no child left behind,' 'Operation Iraqi Freedom.'  But an analysis of 'conservative/regressive' and 'liberal/progressive'  the basic terms of political identification  is a good place to begin.

(Excerpt from the opening chapter of a book in progress: 'A Progressive Manifesto.')
 

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

---

'SHUT UP!,' THEY EXPLAIN

 

By Ernest Partridge

February 13, 2005

 

''Buzz Off' in no way constitutes valid rebuttal.' New Yorker Cartoon (From memory)

Have you noticed?

Those of us who suspect that the election was stolen (a.k.a. 'conspiracy nuts'), have presented an impressive array of evidence -- statistical, anecdotal and circumstantial -- to support our claims. In response to this we have been provided scant rebuttal evidence.

Instead, we have been ridiculed, vilified, and, most damaging of all, ignored. If our concerns are warranted, then the manipulation of the past election (and perhaps the elections of 2000 and 2002 as well) is arguably the most important news event since the founding of our republic, for a fraudulent national election strikes at the very heart of our democracy. If we the people of the United States are no longer able to remove the government through the ballot box, we are no longer ruled 'with the consent of the governed.' Government of, by, and for the people is finished.

Furthermore, 'the press' (which we now call 'the media') is no longer our defense against tyranny, for it now serves the government.

To be sure, the conventional view that George Bush and the Republicans won the election 'fair and square,'is not without a few defenses. But, as I attempted to demonstrate in my previous essay ('Has the Case for Election Fraud been Refuted'), these arguments do not stand up to close inspection. And what, for the most part, is the response when the skeptics confront the media and the 'winners'with their questions and their evidence, and demand an explanation?

'Shut Up!,'they explain.

In this essay, I will take a different approach to the issue of electoral integrity. Rather than continue with accusations and evidence, both new and re-iterated, I will pose a series of questions - questions which, for the most part, have been ignored by the media and by the beneficiaries of the past election, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party.

It is far better that we ask questions about the integrity of our elections than make accusations. Accusations soon become tedious and wear out their welcome. But questions put our adversaries on the defensive - which is where they most assuredly belong.

These are questions about the last three elections that must not be allowed to fade away. Not unless and until they are plausibly answered.  And if they are not plausibly answered, then decisive action by the American citizens is very much in order.   These questions have not been answered, and there is little evidence so far that they ever will be.

'Shut Up!''Get over it!''Let's move on!' Are not answers.

Now to the questions:


Can the GOP provide proof that the paperless voting machines and the compiling computers (manufactured and coded by Republicans) provided accurate tallies of the voting? Could they do so if they wanted to? If not, why not?

Clearly the Republicans can provide no such proof directly, because the machines were deliberately designed not to provide such proof - there are no paper records, and the source code (software) is secret. Thus, in response to the demand for validation, the manufacturers have only one possible response: 'Trust us!'

Of course, voting results could be audited and validated if it were required by law. In fact, validation is required in the state of Nevada, and thus, in that state at least, e-voting machines produce paper records of each vote.

Even without paper records, indirect methods of validation can be devised. For example, a sampling of e-voting machines could be selected at random during election day, 'pulled'from the precincts, and checked for input/output consistency. Another method would be a random selection of polling precincts where voters would be asked to vote first with e-voting machines and then again with paper ballots. (Only one vote per voter would officially count, of course). If the machines were 'fixed,'this would show up in a comparison of the totals. (For more detail, see my blog of October 30, 2004).   With both of these cases, of course, the selection of test machines must be totally random and performed during election day. No such validation procedures were performed anywhere during the November 2, election.

Absent paper records and election day verification procedures, there remain statistical analyses. As I have argued elsewhere (here,  here, and here), these studies indicate compelling evidence of fraud. Predictably, they have been almost totally ignored by the mainstream media.


Why won't the e-voting machines provide auditable paper records?

I've heard two answers to this question, both laughably inadequate: (a) paper records would be prohibitively expensive, and (b) paper records would be impossibly impractical. Both excuses have been decisively refuted by perfectly affordable and practical use of paper validation in the state of Nevada. In addition, Diebold Corp., one of the two largest manufacturers of e-voting machines, also makes ATM machines and the credit card mechanisms on gasoline pumps. Both, of course, produce paper records. So why not also for e-voting machines?

A few months ago, I happened to see on CSPAN a hearing by the Federal Election Commission on the e-voting machines. When asked if paper records would be feasible, one witness produced a printout that was several feet long, and proclaimed that such a printout would be required for every vote. This of course was a damnable lie, clearly exposed, once again, by the employment of paper validation in Nevada. That 'demonstration'before the Commission can only be interpreted as evidence of the desperation of those who doggedly oppose (for whatever covert reasons) the use of paper records of e-voting.


Why won't the Diebold and ES&S corporations publish their source codes?

The standard answer is these codes are the private ('proprietary') property of the corporations,
and thus must be kept secret to protect that property. Kinda like Col. Sanders' recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But there are patent and copyright laws to protect 'intellectual property.' Moreover, most of the 'property'protected by copyright, namely musical and literary works, are by their very nature, public entities - i.e., not 'secret.'So if songs and novels and essays and movies can all be protected by copyrights, why not the source codes for e-voting and vote compiling machines? The insistence by the voting code writers that these codes most nonetheless be kept secret, can only lead one to wonder: 'just what are they trying to hide?'

If Diebold, ES&S, etc. have, as they contend, nothing to hide, why do they continue to compromise their reputations by refusing to release the codes for public inspection?

The computerized compiling of regional (e.g., statewide) returns provides another opportunity for election fraud.  Is it possible to ensure the accuracy of the compiling process and to defeat attempts to "rig" these totals through computer hacking?  If so, are such verification methods in use?  If not, then why not?

It is, in fact, possible to ensure the accuracy of compiled election returns.  One strategy would be to utilize two independent parallel compiling methods and teams.  If the resulting totals are identical, there is very little chance of fraud.  If there is a significant disparity in the results, then a recount by yet another method should be initiated automatically.  I am not aware that such validation procedures were operating in the last elections.  So, to summarize the answers to this three-part question: Yes, it is possible to check and ensure the accuracy of statewide compilations.  No, it appears that these verification methods are not in use.  The third part -- "if not, why not?" -- is for the defenders of the present system to answer.

Our remaining questions stand alone, and require no commentary.

Congressman Rush Holt (D. NJ) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D. NY) both introduced bills that would require paper records of votes cast on e-voting machines. Both bills were killed in the House and Senate committees by the Republican leadership in both houses. Why are the Congressional Republicans opposed to paper validation of e-voting machines?

Why will the Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International not release the raw exit polling data from the Ohio election? What reasons do they give for the alleged 'error'in the early Ohio exit polls?

Why were exit polls in uncontested states and states with auditable returns extremely accurate, while the exit polls in the 'battleground states'were not?

Why did almost all the exit poll 'errors'throughout the US favor Bush, while the very few exceptions were all within the margin of error?

What are the odds of this happening, purely 'by chance?'  Qualified statisticians (e.g. Dr. Steven Freeman,  Jonathan Simon, and Dr. Ron Baiman) have calculated these odds to be 'statistically impossible.'Why are these statistical analyses not scrupulously rebutted, but instead are ridiculed or else simply ignored?

Without question, many laws were broken (especially in Ohio), specifically the federal 'Voting Rights Act.'  In Nevada and Oregon, Democratic registration forms were trashed, and so noted by competent witnesses.  Why are there no indictments?

In the 2000 election, Republican staff members from Washington were flown down to Miami, where they disrupted and shut down an official government activity - the recounting of ballots. Why were there no indictments?

Do all the above questions add up to 'reasonable doubt' that the election of 2004 was fair, and that subsequent elections will be fair? Is this a degree of 'reasonable doubt'that might lead a grand jury to indict?

If, as the accusers contend, the party in control of the unauditable machines and the secret software can not be voted out of office, can that government in any sense be said to possess 'the consent of the governed', and can the US government be said to be a democracy?

Can we therefore afford not to investigate these accusations and thus to continue to use voting machinery that is not secure and verifiable? Can we, in short, allow ourselves to 'just get over it'?

When such questions as these arise, why should the burden of proof be placed on the skeptics? Don't we, as citizens, have the right to expect that the elections are fair, and that our government will establish rigorous and public safeguards to secure that right? (See my 'Do We Still Have a Democracy?)

Why have the above questions rarely been raised and investigated in the mainstream media?


And finally:

Suppose you wanted to set up a fraudulent voting system that would assure victory for your party and yet con the public into believing the system was fair and accurate. How could you improve upon the e-voting system in place - with its secret software and its unauditable and unverifiable 'output,' combined with a totally incurious mass media?


These questions must be asked, repeatedly and relentlessly, until they are either plausibly answered or, more likely, the public finally comes to realize and appreciate that there are no acceptable answers to these questions.  For it is becoming ever-more apparent that the authentic though hidden and unspoken answers to these questions must lead to the inescapable conclusion that our national elections are farces and frauds, and that we the people have thus lost the capacity to replace our government through the ballot box.  If this is the case, that government, put simply, no longer rules with "the consent of the governed."

We must therefore demand the return of fair and verifiable elections and with that realization, the restoration of government of, by and for the people.  And we must devoutly hope that this can be accomplished peacefully.  For as John F. Kennedy warned: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable."
 

Copyright 2005, by Ernest Partridge

Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He publishes the website, 'The Online Gadfly' (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, 'The Crisis Papers' (www.crisispapers.org).

---

Previous Partridge Essays

---

Bush Watch is a non-advocacy site paid for by Politex, a non-affiliated U.S. citizen.
Editorial Policy: All entries are dated and documented as needed.
Text (c) 1998-2005 Politex. Permission of author required for reprinting.
Duration of working link not under our control.
Updated daily at various times.
Send all e-mail to Politex.