Of course this is all simply a coincidence and the personal relationships and financial connections don’t have any correlation at all to the situation at hand.

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon , starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

The money came primarily from a fund-raiser that Verizon held for Mr. Rockefeller in March in New York and another that AT&T sponsored for him in May in San Antonio.

Mr. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emerged last week as the most important supporter of immunity in devising a compromise plan with Senate Republicans and the Bush administration.

The most telling quote from all of this has to be from AT&T spokeswoman, Claudia B. Jones, who said:

“Many AT&T executives work with the leaders of both the House and Senate Commerce Committees on a daily basis and have come to know them over the years”, Ms. Jones said.

I’m sure they have.

Read the full article in The New York Times

…will work so hard to do nothing?

This would be kinda funny if the implications weren’t so tragically fatal for so many.

As the Iraq war debate, surrounding the Defense authorization bill, heats up in the Senate, Republicans may have found a way around a particularly thorny issue today.

Read The Full Report

Uh, yeah. Okay. Sure. By the way, would you like a glass of water to wash down that throat choking sized lie? Do you think these politicians really believe it themselves, or what do you think are the drugs of choice they need to partake of in order to be able to live with such pronounced contradictions between stated intention and reality?

This is just one small example of the a much, much larger condition regarding our whole governance process in this nation.

AT&T doles out $54,000 ahead of cable bill debate

Communications giant AT&T pushed a controversial bill to have state government license cable systems by showering more than $54,000 in campaign cash on dozens of lawmakers and Gov. Jim Doyle over the past 15 months.

Campaign-finance records show that AT&T’s political action committee gave a total of $10,000 to four legislators and the Assembly Republican Campaign Committee in the past two months, when legislators negotiated details of the complex package with AT&T’s 15 registered lobbyists.

AT&T is launching its own Internet-based television service, called U-Verse, to compete with cable systems.

It’s unusual for one special-interest group to donate so much after November elections. The next partisan elections are 18 months away, and $1,000 went to the chief Senate sponsor of the bill, Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) five weeks ago, even though Plale won’t need the money until his re-election in 2010.

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“It’s impossible to not see the connection” between AT&T’s campaign cash and its push for the deregulation bill, said Mike McCabe, executive director of the non-profit Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which monitors campaign donations.

AT&T’s recent campaign gifts are also unusual because company officials haven’t been “particularly active” givers in past years, McCabe said. “The giving is targeted.”

AT&T spokesman Jeff Bentoff disagreed.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” Bentoff said. “Giving is never done with specific outcome, or bill, in mind.”

AT&T, the Mother Theresa of corporations.

Doyle, Republican leaders pushing the bill and Plale all had the same response when asked about the AT&T campaign checks: The money won’t influence their decisions or votes.

“It’s not a factor at all,” said Doyle, whose re-election campaign got about $13,000 from AT&T workers last year and who would have to sign or veto what the Legislature passes.

————-

“I don’t think it’s money talking,” said Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem), whose personal campaign fund got $1,100 from AT&T employees last year, according to state Elections Board records.

But the Assembly Republican Campaign Committee, which Huebsch controls, got $6,000 from AT&T’s political committee in February.

This is like people claiming that the tens of billions of dollars a year business spends on advertising each year really doesn’t have an effect. Yeah, that is why they spend billions of dollars a year on it, because it has no effect.

Corporations should simply flat out not be allowed to have ‘political action committees.’ Only people should have rights in this country and be able to participate in the political process, not fictitious artificial entities which allow a small governing few from usurping our rights to wield power over democratic majorities.

Read The Full Article

John Edwards has been saying the right things about the real issues throughout the silly season of media hype on personalities, and getting fully ignored or framed as a preener by way of haircut. I’m impressed with his position on corporate power and democracy - he’s the closest to Kucinich on this issue, which to me overrides most others, being at the root of it all.

I have listened for the stand in issues to emerge from Clinton and Obama - and have found them to be playing the same game of muddling the middle, and even playing to Republicans. Edwards is clearly speaking off-memo, and the DLC is probably getting a budget to marginalize him. If you haven’t read any of this statement yet, check it online Here

Here’s a good piece from the middle:

The choices we make will determine not just the quality of life our children will inherit, but the fate of the world we leave behind.

To succeed for our children where we have too often failed for ourselves, we must choose a new course. Those wedded to the policies of the 70s, 80s, or 90s are wedded to the past — ideas and policies that are tired, shop worn and obsolete. We will find no answers there.

But small thinking and outdated answers aren’t the only problems with a vision for the future that is rooted in nostalgia. The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn’t. It’s not just that the answers of the past aren’t up to the job today, it’s that the system that produced them was corrupt — and still is. It’s controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it’s perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don’t stand a chance.

Real change starts with being honest — the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It’s rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It’s rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it’s rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They’ll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are — not for the country, but for themselves.

Politicians who care more about their careers than their constituents go along to get elected. They make easy promises to voters instead of challenging them to take responsibility for our country. And then they compromise even those promises to keep the lobbyists happy and the contributions coming.

Instead of serving the people and the nation, too many play the parlor game of Washington — trading favors and campaign money, influencing votes and compromising legislation. It’s a game that never ends, but every American knows — it’s time to end the game.

And it’s time for the Democratic Party — the party of the people — to end it.

The choice for our party could not be more clear. We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other.

Joshua Holland writes for Alternet on this as well, with his column Edwards Goes After The ‘Corporate Democrats’

The Progressive Daily Beacon also weighs in with this analysis of how “It is interesting to observe Republicans and the corporate-owned media as they attack the rare wealthy person who dares attempt to help America’s poor and impoverished.”

And just for good measure…

What Excessive Pay Package?

- Posted by Peter Jones for USTV Media

Marshall Ganz delivers one of the best pieces I’ve read in awhile about reinvigorating the value of organizing, reconnecting to the importance of social association and the need for people to enter into relationships with one another to articulate common purposes and act on them. Like all great truths, this works on every level, from the most broadly social and political to the most individual of relationships.

Ganz seems to hit the bullseye on so many aspects of our current situation. The aspects of relationship and how it is most meaningful in a social context, and where real solutions lie in formulating these bonds in an effective way. I recommend this short essay as a must read, particularly for anyone involved in organizing work of any nature.

Read The Essay on TPM Cafe

To make “corn gas” or put another way “GMO gas” as it might be called, it takes from 3.5 to 5 gallons of water to make one gallon of GMO gas, but how much oil does it take to make the pesticides and the energy that is needed to create GMO gas? And of course we don’t need to mention how Vilsack cut the legs out from under local communities in Iowa who would have liked to take a stand on some of these issues by signing that bill that “outlawed” any local control regarding “seeds”.

In a way what Vilsack is proposing is replacing one form of pollution with another form of pollution. Corporate America is going to do - no is doing to promote more tech solutions for the tech-knowledge mayhem they (the corporate tech Mafia) have already created. They are campaigning for a new “greased grove road” that will only end in another dead end and a more weaken “Earth Community”.

How do we construct a response to all this madness? Where is the “Earth Jurisprudence” that would allow us to point out what Monsanto/Vilsack are up too? To objectify this and then turn it into more of the same tech crap that got us into the mess we are presently in, is just another from of insanity. We all know what the definition of insanity is, don’t we? “in·san·i·ty n 1. extreme foolishness or an act that demonstrates it 2. legal incompetence or irresponsibility because of a psychiatric disorder

Here’s The Article

What’s the connection to GMO corn, not to hard to figure out is it.

Here’s another angle via YouTube on our King Vilsack

- Posted by Frank Arundel

——————-

Frank,

You have put your finger on it: the only candidates and the only “solutions” we are offered are ones that continue the charade, while destroying human and nature’s communities. Vilsack and “GMO gas” are the latest flavor combination being offered on a menu that serves only pre-packaged and shrink-wrapped “food” for non-thought. Allowing nature to be nature and people to make decisions for their own communities is beyond the imagining of a culture based on domination of all by a few. Those who refuse to choose from among the “alternative” forms of political and industrial “solutions” are labeled misfits, malcontents, eco-terrorists or worse.

Off-putting as are the labels, I don’t see how Earth Jurisprudence (or whatever term is used to indicate symbiotic sanity rather than parasitic insanity) can ascend to the status of a real alternative until people take seriously their individual responsibilities, and perhaps more to the point their competence to participate actively in changing the way decisions are made for their own communities. Many of us travel far and wide, attend conferences and lectures, post insightful papers and wise essays, and share a vision of sane justice for living systems that seldom becomes the basis for governing decisions. Thinking globally, we generally fail to act at all, often on the premise that without a few well-placed global “wins” we can’t save the planet. So we wait for the right candidate, the right policy, the best compromise and a lucky break.

Not one of us doesn’t live in a particular place. Not one of us doesn’t breath particular air, drink from a particular stream, make choices about where the particular food we eat comes from. Not many of us believe we have the right, the authority, the competence, the clout to make governing decisions about the particular stream, air, food source on which we depend for life. Or if we do believe it, we talk about it to like-minded out-of-towners. We create a tragic sub-culture of victims.

But what if people in the communities where we live did believe they have the right, the authority, the competence, and the clout, and then acted on that sense of authority, with confidence? What if majorities of people who depend on a particular stream, field, breeze, acted within the framework of that ecology, as stewards and participants, with rights and responsibilities in it and on its behalf? What if we, in the places where we live, refused to obey laws and policies that usurp those rights and responsibilities?

Though posed hypothetically, these “what ifs” are not meant hypothetically, and here and there some communities are beginning to take seriously their responsibilities, authority and competency to reject the technological “alternatives” offered as the only legal choices, and to assert the authority and right and competency to make decisions that escape the treadmill of “production above all else.” It is possible for communities to refuse the role of resource colony for the commodification of every thing, and it is more necessary than ever for communities to assert self-governance that rejects orthodox choices among the lesser of the proposed evils.

If we don’t exercise our responsibilities, our authority to self-govern, right where we live, do we imagine we can do it on the global scale? Do we really believe our best ideas, our most well articulated plans will or should be embraced and applied to all communities, when we can not implement them right where we live? Should we leave it to the national governing structure and continue to beg to be heard in the halls of power? Are we jealous to replace the status quo with our own vision, bypassing via some watershed election or stealth candidate the informed consent of everyone effected by the changes we think most appropriate? Do we distrust our judgement on these matters so much that we wouldn’t dream of trying out our ideas in our own community first, by educating our neighbors and joining with them in local self-governing decisions that implement the community’s best ideas as binding law? How indeed do we construct a response to the madness of false choices, if we refuse to act where we have power to act, and if we remain afraid to make a stand where we are and where we live? Are we going to wait for everyone to agree everywhere before we dare? Is it possible to lead by example? Who are we waiting for?

- Posted by BenGPrice@aol.com, CELDF

Some politispam making its way around the internet these days. At least the right wing is getting a little more creative these days and not just falling back on the old classic “Don’t vote for no n****r” routine from generations past.

By the way, do you think the person that wrote this has ever used the word “Muslim” without “radical” in front of it? (and we aren’t even beginning to touch on the discriminatory premise inherent in this whole thing, that simply being Muslim would in itself pose some kind of threat to American society).

Interesting…… Everyone needs to know this before going to the polls.

Subject: LET US REMAIN ALERT………………..

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a Muslim from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, an atheist from Wichita, Kansas.
Obama’s parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced.
His father returned to Kenya.
His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a radical Muslim from Indonesia.
When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia.
Obama attended a Muslim school in Jakarta.
He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim.
He is quick to point out that he was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school.

Obama’s political handlers are attempting to make it appear that Obama’s introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best.
In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son’s education.
Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obamas mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam.
Osama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta.
Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

Let us all remain alert concerning Obamas expected presidential candidacy.

You can find a rebuttal to this here at snopes.com

You’re a decider, George? Come on, get real. You haven’t made a serious decision in your entire life about anything more vital than what brand of beer to guzzle or what grade of cocaine to snort. Strutting around the White House claiming to be ‘the Decider’ is a laugh and a half, George. You said it before and no one cared. You said it again today and it’s just as pathetic. So, just what is it you’ve actually decided?

Face, it George, for six years now, you’ve been unable to make a single decision about anything that made a difference to any of us. From day one, others made the decisions and you just followed along as best you could Karl (Houdini) Rove was the one who decided your public image, the Supreme Court decided your election, hackable Diebold machines decided your second term, the religious right decided your domestic policy and PNAC decided your war plans. So, when did you buy in to that nonsense about being a “Decider,” George?

But, okay, George, - we’ll play along with you. Let’s pretend for the moment that you actually have some historical background, some worldly knowledge, some international experience, or some intellectual curiosity – a few of the things that are really needed to make important decisions in this time of crisis. Let’s look at just a FEW of the less than impressive decisions that were made during your presidency and see if you will really take responsibility for making them:

Think on it, George, if you are truly the DECIDER, then it was YOU who decided:

TO KEEP CHENEY’S ENERGY MEETINGS SECRET FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO THIS DAY

TO THREATEN BOMBING THE TALIBAN - BEFORE 9/11 - UNLESS THEY ENTERED INTO AN OIL PIPELINE DEAL WHICH THEY ULTIMATELY REFUSED

TO HAVE THE PATRIOT ACT READY FOR APPROVAL BY CONGRESS BEFORE 9/11

TO BAR AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EVENTS OF 9/11 FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR

TO UNDERFUND THE 9/11 COMMISSION AND DENY THEM SUBPOENA POWERS AND STONEWALL THEIR ACCESS TO VITAL DATA

TO LIE OUR NATION INTO AN ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL WAR AGAINST IRAQ

TO REFUSE TO INVESTIGATE THE VALERIE PLAME LEAK WITHIN YOUR OWN WHITE HOUSE

TO SEND OUR TROOPS INTO A WAR WITHOUT ADEQUATE ARMOR AND SUPPLIES

TO GIVE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN NO BID CONTRACTS TO HALLIBURTON AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES, AND TO HAVE NO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE WAY THE MONEY WAS SPENT

TO BAR IMAGES OF FLAG-DRAPED COFFINS OF OUR DEAD SOLDIERS AND REGULAR ANNOUNCEMENTS OF CASUALTY NUMBERS.

TO DENY THAT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF IRAQI CIVILIANS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN YOUR WAR

TO HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO PLAN FOR MAINTAINING PEACE IN A NATION YOU CHOSE TO OCCUPY OR REBUILDING THE DAMAGE YOU INFLICTED

TO HAVE NO UNDERSTANDING OF THE CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN IRAQ AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF INSTALLING A FUNDAMENTALIST CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT IN A FORMERLY SECULAR NATION

TO DENY THAT IRAQ HAS BECOME EMBROILED IN A DEVASTATING CIVIL WAR AND TO CONTINUALLY LIE THAT PROGRESS WAS BEING MADE

TO IGNORE THE ADVICE OF FAR WISER AND MORE EXPERIENCED STATESMEN AND MILITARY LEADERS WHO HAVE WARNED YOU ABOUT YOUR RECKLESS HUBRIS

TO SPY ON AMERICANS WITHOUT SECURING A COURT WARRANT

TO PERMIT TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB, GUANTANAMO AND OTHER PRISONS, AND TO RENDITION PRISONERS FOR TORTURE IN OTHER COUNTRIES

TO SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS FOR DETAINEES ARBITRARILY DETERMINED TO BE ENEMY COMBATANTS

TO BE TOTALLY UNPREPARED FOR HURRICANE KATRINA AND TO ABANDON THE VICTIMS OF THAT DISASTER TO THIS DAY

TO SEND THIS NATION INTO A SPIRAL OF DEBT AND DISRESPECT AS NEVER BEFORE IN OUR HISTORY

Had enough, George? I could go on, but this will have to do for now. Read the list slowly and deliberately if you can focus long enough to deal with it. Then, if you have the guts, stand in front of the American people and declare yourself the DECIDER! Tell them that it was YOU, not your handlers or your puppeteers or your advisors or your caretakers who made these decisions. Tell them how proud you are of your decisions, and how much the nation and the world have benefited from your leadership.

Oh yes, George, just one more thing. Give us some idea of the credentials you claim to have that allow you the right to make a single military decision about the war you lied us into. Tell us why YOU, and not the American people, the generals, the Congress, the Baker-Hamilton Group, or anyone else can be ignored while YOU parade around as the sole DECIDER of the fate of the nation and the world.

And then, George, - for kicks - read the US Constitution, and discover that YOU WORK FOR US, the people. You are a public servant, George, not the Emperor or Dictator of this nation, and you are beholden to us all for every move you make.

Until then, Mr. Decider, it’s you and Barney and Laura against the rest of humanity. This “Decider” nonsense really would be a laugh and a half, George, if the consequences were not so terrible. Perhaps it’s time for you to go back to making decisions about beer and coke, - and leaving the really important stuff to those who are equipped to handle it.

- Posted by Reg, TVNewsLies,org

An excellent and timely perspective on the current state of our nation’s state of justice and equality, or lack of it, and their causes. It is especially poignant to me as I have just returned from Memphis actually, including a visit to the National Civil Rights Museum, located at the Lorraine Motel, site of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. I don’t think I was prepared for the effect that being there would actually have on me. The awareness of the depth of commitment and level of sacrifice to the struggle for basic rights is something I’m afraid is foreign to too many Americans these days. Of course, the fact that majorities of people were often opposed to the civil rights struggle from before the end of slavery up to the murder of MLK, Jr., is a fact that should give us pause about our own self-awareness of the conditions of our society today.

One of the disturbing aspects of the museum, however, was the fancy display wall of high level financial donors to the facility, and the monikers they would give to them by category. When a company like ExxonMobil is labeled as a “Liberator”, you know we are truly colonized by the Corporate State and that ‘The Dream’ is in some serious jeopardy.

Martin Luther King Jr. is held in precious memory because he made an alternative world seem possible. He spoke of a dream, but he mobilized a pragmatic program for change. Idealism, in his terms, was the height of realism. Thus, healing between races, the lifting up of the socially downtrodden, and the amelioration of all that made for violence were not three items on King’s agenda, but one human project.

We honor King today not as a way of recalling the past, but as a way of resuming his campaign in the present. A dream, yes. But equally a three-sided political movement. No racial justice without economic justice! No justice, period, without peace!

Now if we can only work to manifest a similar organized action on behalf of asserting people’s rights over the usurpation of those same rights by ruling elites hiding behind the fictional veil of ‘corporate personhood.’ This represents another use of the law by the modern Corporatocracy to sublimate people’s rights, egregious as was the use of law to keep people slaves during the time of the Slaveocracy,

Read James Carroll’s complete essay Here

Looks like we have a well-placed hammer doing a number on obliterating the whole Ford memorial mythos nail. This is definitely a recommended read for our fellow citizens who are taking in too much of the history soma in the United States of Amnesia.

But is that what Ford really did? Let’s recall the context. The burglary and cover-up we call “Watergate” gave the American people a rare glimpse at raw government power. The break-in at the Democratic
National Committee was not the only criminal activity that Nixon administration operatives had committed. They had also broken into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked to the New York Times the Pentagon Papers, which disclosed former President Lyndon Johnson’s determination to fight the war in Vietnam even though his advisors knew it couldn’t be won. Nixon’s infamous “plumbers” unit had wiretapped people thought to be undermining the war effort. He also had used the IRS to harass people on his notorious enemies list.

For once Americans could see the truth about unrestrained government: its subservience to privileged interests, its disregard for freedom, its pettiness. The wizard’s curtain had been pulled aside momentarily, and the people were disgusted. Respect for government and the presidency plummeted. This terrified the bipartisan power elite. The broad revulsion threatened to undermine the tacit consensus that had supported the Democratic-Republican power structure for years. Who knows what might have happened if the public’s outrage had not been contained? Maybe a third party would have flourished. Power and lucre were at stake.

————————

Thus, what Ford accomplished was to stanch a growing public cynicism about government and to restore complacency. This is universally heralded as a good thing. Observe how nearly every political figure and establishment pundit thinks Ford’s pardon of Nixon was wise. But why is it good that we were “spared” a full accounting of Nixon’s offenses? Could it be that the American people might have learned too much and drawn more-general conclusions about the morality of this government than the power elite would have preferred?

Read The Full Article Here