Donle’s Daily Dispatches

Volume 1 Issue 145             Today’s News and Views         Monday, May 22, 2006

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It must be very difficult to become a healthy adult in a family with a history of multi-generational pathology. Normalcy must be an impossible goal to reach if your grandfather robbed bones from graves and then made money for and with Hitler’s war machine.

The Bush family has all of the outward appearances of success. They are wealthy, white, except for Jeb’s “little brown ones,” hold powerful positions and can trace their ancestry back to the bluest blooded New Englanders. Most of them attended Yale, a prestigious institution of higher learning and more importantly a place that can guarantee entry into the rarified world of the American elite.

It has long been rumored that Yale’s secret Skull and Bones society held Geronimo’s bones. According to recent news accounts, not only does the Skull and Bones society hold Geronimo’s remains, but they were stolen by a man named Prescott Bush, the current president’s grandfather. Prescott Bush was stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma in 1918. The Apache leader Geronimo was held at Fort Sill at the time of his death and was buried there. A recently unearthed letter from one Skull and Bones member to another alleges that Bush and a group of friends in his unit desecrated Geronimo’s grave, stealing his skull and bones.

Prescott Bush went on to become a United States senator and progenitor of two future presidents. He also was a criminal. Granddaddy Bush was a director of Union Banking Corporation (UBC) in New York City. The assets of that bank were seized by the United States government in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemies Act. America’s enemy in 1942 was Hitler’s Germany.

UBC was an investment bank owned by a bank that was controlled by the German Thyssen family. The federal government concluded that UBC shares, "are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, [and] is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country."  

Fritz Thyssen wrote a book called, “I Paid Hitler.” The seemingly cheesy title tells it all. Thyssen gave money directly to Adolf Hitler beginning in the 1920s. The Thyssen industrial empire relied on slave labor provided by the Nazis and they were Prescott Bush’s business partners.

Is it truly surprising that George W. Bush displays such pathological behaviors of his own? He comes from a family that demonstrates a blatant disregard for the most basic moral norms. Prescott Bush was a traitor in war time and a grave desecrater. George W.  stole his way into the presidency and is now prepared to risk confrontation with China, Russia and the rest of the world in order to use nuclear weapons against Iran. Not only would he fulfill the neocon dream of taking over the Middle East but he also hopes to stop his unprecedented slide in the polls and prevent being impeached.

Bush always felt entitled to get what he wanted. If granddad feels entitled to make money with a declared enemy during wartime, then the grandson will surely be entitled to become president by hook and crook and then inform us that he is the “decider” for us all.

When black people are in any way troubled, their family histories are dissected and examined. We hear endlessly about our “pathologies” and how they have made us worthless and are responsible for everything wrong with America.

We rarely hear about any other group being pathological. The Bush family certainly is. They are pathologically greedy and hungry for power. They aren’t even very good at being a family. When George W. and Barbara Bush lost their three year old daughter to leukemia in 1953, they didn’t even have a funeral. The Bushes gave her body to medical science and moved on. The worst, poorest, most supposedly pathological black family would not let a child leave this world without a funeral. The term pathological seems to be applied only to the down trodden.

The Bush family role in the founding of the Skull and Bones society is a horrific tale. Prescott and his pals not only thought it was amusing to desecrate a grave but to take the bones and use them in bizarre rituals to cement their claims to privilege.

Thousands of Americans beg, borrow and steal to pay for their children to go to Yale and schools like it and they have good reasons for doing so. The eastern elite institutions can give a leg up in climbing the social, economic and political ladder.

It is certainly important to the Bush clan. Outgoing CIA director Porter Goss, and Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, were both members of the same Yale fraternity as the president’s uncle, William Bush. America is now ruled by the Skull and Bones society and Yale frat buddies. (If John Kerry had won we would still be ruled by Skull and Bones.)

In almost every culture on earth, it is considered a sin to desecrate a final resting place. Such actions bring misfortune, or so most people believe. It would be a shame if we all suffered because a bunch of Yalies thought it would be funny to steal a dead Indian’s bones.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BC. Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City. She can be reached via e-Mail at margaret.kimberley@blackcommentator.com. You can read more of Ms. Kimberley's writings at freedomrider.blogspot.com.

MP to investigate Dr Kelly's death

Hélène Mulholland
Friday May 19, 2006

Guardian Unlimited

A backbench MP is to investigate the "unanswered questions" from the official inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly.

The former Liberal Democrat environmental spokesman Norman Baker today revealed his decision to stand down from the shadow cabinet two months ago was based on a quest to establish the "truth" behind Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Baker said he wanted to return to the issue because the 2003 Hutton inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

He vowed to question ministers and to unearth new facts in a bid to establish the "truth" of the case.

Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18 2003 after being named as the possible source of a BBC story on the government's Iraq dossier.

Later that month Lord Hutton was appointed head of an independent inquiry into the events surrounding Dr Kelly's death. After a two-month inquiry, Lord Hutton concluded the scientist had taken his own life.

Oxford coroner Nicholas Gardiner subsequently looked into the possibility of reopening the inquest into Dr Kelly's death, but after reviewing the evidence with the lord chancellor, decided that there was no case for doing so.

Mr Baker explained that he had decided to wait until he relinquished his environmental role before embarking on an investigation to find out the "truth" that the Hutton inquiry had failed to deliver.

"It did not answer questions," he told Guardian Unlimited today.

"It was not carried out using proper rules of evidence, people were not giving evidence under oath and the whole thing became a criticism of the BBC."

Mr Baker said he had given himself a year to carry out his inquiries. This will include revising the medical evidence, interviews with experts and looking at issues relating to the government's "behaviour" in the affair, as well as the weapons of mass destruction claims made in the months preceding Dr Kelly's death.

Mr Baker admitted he already holds a "number of theories" about the scientist's death, but declined to speculate so early into his investigation, which began two months ago just after he stood down from his shadow post.

Mr Baker, who is known for his forensic use of parliamentary questions, insisted his decision to stand down after six years as environment spokesman was his choice alone.

"I have long been unhappy about the sequence of events and I was unhappy at the time about the way the Hutton inquiry was conducted and I wanted to free up some time to look into this," he said.

"I haven't informed the party leadership yet," he added. Asked if Dr Kelly's widow, Janice, was aware of his plans, Mr Baker said: "I recognise the sensitivity of the matter for the family and the need to speak with them, but only if they prepared to do so."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

From the Los Angeles Times

A Job Americans Won't Do, Even at $34 an Hour

Some landscape firms rebut claims that higher pay, not immigration reform, is needed.

By David Streitfeld
Times Staff Writer

May 18, 2006

Cyndi Smallwood is looking for a few strong men for her landscaping company. Guys with no fear of a hot sun, who can shovel dirt all day long. She'll pay as much as $34 an hour.

She can't find them.

Maybe potential employees don't know about her tiny Riverside firm. Maybe the problem is Southern California's solid economy and low unemployment rate. Or maybe manual labor is something that many Americans couldn't dream of doing.

"I'm baffled why more people do not apply," Smallwood says.

President Bush is not. In his speech to the nation Monday night, he referred to "jobs Americans are not doing," echoing a point he has been making for years. To fill these spurned jobs and keep the economy humming, Bush says, the U.S. needs a guest worker program.

Otherwise, the logic goes, fruit will rot in the fields, offices will overflow with trash and lawns and parks will revert to desert.

Countering that view, opponents of a guest worker program say that Americans would find the jobs more enticing if there wasn't foreign competition to swell the labor pool and push wages down.

Smallwood is ambivalent on immigration reform, saying demands for immediate citizenship by those who entered the country illegally are offensive. But without a guest worker program, she says, her company probably will not survive.

"To get workers, you have to steal them from other companies," the 54-year-old entrepreneur says.

Even that has been unproductive recently. She'd ideally like to add eight employees by the end of the year to her current staff of 12.

The lawn and landscape business in California is heavily Latino, with an abundance of illegal immigrants. In a study of Los Angeles County's "off-the-books" labor force, the Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research organization, estimated that a quarter of the landscape workers were undocumented. That leaves the companies vulnerable to crackdowns, which has them agitating for guest workers.

At Smallwood's company, Diversified Landscape Management, there's one white employee, an engineer. The other employees are Latino and, as far as Smallwood can tell, all in the country legally. Her employees need driver's licenses and the ability to move through freeway checkpoints near the border, which tend to eliminate any with fake papers.

Thirty years ago, those in the landscape industry say, white crews were common. Now, says Jim Newtson, a San Diego contractor, "if you see a white guy, you do a double-take, like when you saw an interracial couple back in the 1960s."

Managers in the business explain it as a cultural shift, saying that native-born, middle-class Americans of all races and ethnic backgrounds tend to look down on manual labor. That leaves immigrants to do the work.

"The people I grew up with 40 years ago expected to work hard physically," says Bob Wade of Wade Landscape in Laguna Beach.

"This is a pretty pampered little town. The kids don't expect to work hard," Wade says. "A lot don't expect to work at all. They just float."

Wade fired one employee three times, the last time for going to look at girls on the beach instead of spraying weeds. The employee — his son — now works in the restaurant industry.

Larger economic forces come into play too. Orange County, for example, consistently has the lowest jobless rate in the state. Although that could be a draw for laborers in states with high unemployment, the high housing prices in the county act as a brake on that sort of migration.

Smallwood grew up doing manual labor. The daughter of a sharecropper in Mississippi, she had to pick her share of cotton from age 6. "I wouldn't do that again for any price," she says.

When she moved to California, she worked as a property manager, then developed a lawn-care business, which she sold in 1998. The death of her only child, Michael, from a drug overdose two years later drew her outside to her own garden. "I watered, fertilized, planted and pruned, determined that nothing else was going to die on me," she says.

That experience led to the creation of Diversified Landscape, which specializes in public works projects. Diversified Landscape installs plants on medians on city streets, creates rock formations called "blankets" for Caltrans on freeway off-ramps and builds irrigation systems on high school sports fields.

As a government contractor, Diversified Landscape is required to pay prevailing wages as calculated by the state Department of Industrial Relations. Experienced laborers earn $34.24 an hour; untrained "tenders" make $14.17. Each work site is required to have an equal number of laborers and tenders.

Landscapers such as Bob Wade, who work for private clients, pay much less — about $8.50 an hour to start. But Smallwood's higher wages don't seem to be helping her very much.

"Last July I ran an ad in the Riverside Press-Enterprise," she says. "I got only two responses." She hired one of them, who left after a few months for a job closer to his home.

Other landscapers also report a labor shortage.

"Our difficulty in hiring is horrible," says Cathy Gurney of Sierra Landscape & Maintenance in Chico, north of Sacramento. "We've been advertising for a supervisor, which would pay $15 to $25 an hour with full benefits. No one qualified is applying."

Some economists say such accounts don't mean that Americans won't do some jobs, but that employers such as Gurney simply aren't paying enough.

"Every time someone says illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans or do jobs Americans don't want, I want to scream," UCLA economist Christopher Thornberg says.

This argument makes Smallwood want to scream herself. On a recent job that went into overtime, a Diversified Landscape foreman, Vincente Sanchez, was making $52.34 an hour.

"How high can you go?" she says.

Outside her office one recent afternoon she encounters Bennie Gray, who says he earns about $60,000 a year detailing cars — a different kind of work, but also done in the hot sun. Gray, a thickly muscled African American, acknowledges that on an hourly basis, he might make more working for Smallwood, but can't imagine it.

"I'm not going to lie," says Gray, 48. "I don't want to work that hard. My ancestors had to work in the fields. My mom still talks about the splinters and sores."

Smallwood's employees have their own theories about the shortage of workers.

"They don't know what the wages are, and they're scared to get their hands dirty," says Marco Camberos. He's running one side of a two-person auger that will be used to dig about 7,000 one-foot holes along a mile of median in Laguna Nigel. The team is planting evergreen shrubs.

Camberos is making $18 an hour as a trainee. At 26, he has a bachelor's degree in chemistry from UC Riverside and plans to open his own landscaping business. "This is the means to an end," he says.

Telling Americans there are jobs they won't do isn't necessarily a way to endear yourself to them. Addressing a group of union leaders in Washington last month, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the members of his audience wouldn't pick lettuce even for $50 an hour.

When some in the crowd angrily dissented, McCain demurred: "You can't do it, my friends." Three dozen demonstrators later showed up at the senator's Phoenix office, bearing lettuce-picker applications as well as heads of lettuce.

McCain may be allied with Bush on this point, but many other Republicans are not. Immigration is driving a wedge between the GOP and its longtime constituency in the business world. Smallwood has two signed photos of Bush on the wall of her office, one of them thanking her for contributing to the Republican National Committee.

Will she be making another contribution to the Republicans anytime soon?

"Not hardly."

That's due in large measure to her anger at her congressman, Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-Diamond Bar), who does not favor a guest worker program.

In January, Smallwood had a contentious meeting with Miller at his district office in Brea. She said Miller twice challenged her assertion that she couldn't find workers for $34 an hour, saying his son would work for that wage and offering to send him over.

Smallwood said she took the deal, but that his son never showed up. Miller declined to be interviewed.

Last week Smallwood wrote a flier that says she would pay $34 with experience and $14 without. The notice cautions that no application would be accepted "without verification of proper identification that allows you, by law, to work in the USA."

The flier is up in more than a dozen landscaping supply stores. So far, Smallwood says, there have been no calls.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Religious Liberals Gain New Visibility
A Different List Of Moral Issues

By Caryle Murphy and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 20, 2006; A01

The religious left is back.

Long overshadowed by the Christian right, religious liberals across a wide swath of denominations are engaged today in their most intensive bout of political organizing and alliance-building since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s, according to scholars, politicians and clergy members.

In large part, the revival of the religious left is a reaction against conservatives' success in the 2004 elections in equating moral values with opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Religious liberals say their faith compels them to emphasize such issues as poverty, affordable health care and global warming. Disillusionment with the war in Iraq and opposition to Bush administration policies on secret prisons and torture have also fueled the movement.

"The wind is changing. Folks -- not just leaders -- are fed up with what is being portrayed as Christian values," said the Rev. Tim Ahrens, senior minister of First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, and a founder of We Believe Ohio, a statewide clergy group established to ensure that the religious right is "not the only one holding a megaphone" in the public square.

"As religious people we're offended by the idea that if you're not with the religious right, you're not moral, you're not religious," said Linda Gustitus, who attends Bethesda's River Road Unitarian Church and is a founder of the new Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture. "I mean there's a whole universe out there [with views] different from the religious right. . . . People closer to the middle of the political spectrum who are religious want their voices heard."

Recently, there has been an increase in books and Web sites by religious liberals, national and regional conferences, church-based discussion groups, and new faith-oriented political organizations. "Organizationally speaking, strategically speaking, the religious left is now in the strongest position it's been in since the Vietnam era," said Clemson University political scientist Laura R. Olson.

What is not clear, according to sociologists and pollsters, is whether the religious left is growing in size as well as activism. Its political impact, including its ability to influence voters and move a legislative agenda, has also yet to be determined.

"I do think the religious left has become more visible and assertive and is attempting to get more organized," said Allen D. Hertzke, a University of Oklahoma political science professor who follows religious movements. "But how big is it? The jury is still out on that."

"My gut tells me that all this foment [on the religious left] is bound to create more involvement in politics," he said. "I don't know whether there's going to be more of them numerically, but you don't need greater numbers to have a political impact; all you need is to be more active. You already see that in Ohio and some other states, where Christian conservatives no longer have a monopoly on faith in politics."

Conservative Christian activist Gary L. Bauer said the religious left "is getting more media attention" but "it's not clear" that it is getting more organized.

"My reaction is 'Come on in, the water's fine' . . . but I think that when you look at frequent church attenders in America, they tend to be pro-life and support marriage as one man and one woman, and so I think the religious left is going to have a hard time making any significant progress" with those voters, he said.

The quickening pulse of the religious left is evident in myriad ways:

· More than a dozen books have been published in the past year decrying the religious right's influence in politics. Three have been particularly influential in galvanizing activists: Michael Lerner's "The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From the Religious Right," Jim Wallis's "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," and Jimmy Carter's "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis."

· The recently formed Network of Spiritual Progressives is holding a four-day conference that began Wednesday at All Souls Church in Northwest Washington. A thousand participants from 39 states are discussing a new "Spiritual Covenant for America" and spent Thursday visiting their members of Congress. Lerner, the California-based rabbi who founded the network, said the conference is partly aimed at countering an aversion to religion among secular liberals and "the liberal culture" of the Democratic Party. "I can guarantee you that every Democrat running for office in 2006 and 2008 will be quoting the Bible and talking about their most recent experience in church," he said.

· The Democratic Faith Working Group, made up of 30 members of the House and scores of aides, has begun meeting monthly on Capitol Hill to discuss faith and politics, opening each session with a prayer. Its purpose is to "work with our fellow Democrats and get them comfortable with faith issues," said its chairman, Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a preacher's son who was raised in the fundamentalist Church of God.

· Organizations and Web sites that meld religion and liberal politics have mushroomed since the 2004 elections, said Clinton White House chief of staff John D. Podesta. The think tank he heads, the Center for American Progress, has helped form alliances between some of these new groups -- such as Faith in Public Life, the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good and FaithfulAmerica.org -- and long-standing organizations, such as the National Council of Churches.

For most of the 20th century -- from the Progressive era through the civil rights movement -- religious involvement in American politics was dominated by the left. That changed in the 1970s, after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights, the formation of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and, on the left, "the rise of a secular, liberal, urban elite that was not particularly comfortable with religion," said Will Marshall III, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

According to John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron, and others, the religious left cuts across almost all denominations, drawing in black churches, liberal Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants as well as Jews, Buddhists, Muslims and people who say they are "spiritual" but not affiliated with an organized faith.

It also includes some theologically traditionalist Christians.

Janel Bakker, 28, a graduate student at Catholic University who attends Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill, an evangelical church affiliated with the Mennonite denomination, said she grew up in a "relatively conservative religious home" where "the big issue was considered to be abortion."

But Bakker, who has attended several rallies against the Iraq war, said she now regards poverty, peace and the environment as important spiritual issues ignored by the religious right. "The religious right has assumed that capitalism is the way to go and is the most moral way to organize society," Bakker added. "Young people are questioning that."

Liberal evangelicals are " leaping out of the closet and they are saying 'Enough is enough,' " said Jack Pannell, spokesman for Sojourners, a Washington-based evangelical social justice ministry. "Evangelical Christians are not all white people living in the suburbs and only concerned with abortion and same-sex marriage."

Some groups on the religious left are clearly seeking to help the Democratic Party. But the relationship is delicate on both sides.

"If I were the Democrats, the last thing I would do is really try to mobilize these folks as a political force . . . because I think some of this is a real unhappiness with the whole business of politicizing religion," said Mark Silk, director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

The Rev. Joseph W. Daniels Jr., senior pastor of Emory United Methodist Church in Northwest Washington, said a key question for him is whether the religious left will become "the polar opposite to . . . the religious right" or be "a voice in the middle."

"What this country needs is strong spiritual leadership that is willing to build bridges. We don't need leaders who are lightning bolts for division and dissension," he said.

Nonetheless, some observers doubt that the revitalization of the religious left will lessen the divisions over religion in politics. "I do think," said Hertzke, "that, if in fact this progressive initiative takes off, we will see an even more polarized electoral environment than we did in 2004."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Tensions were so high last week that President Bush unsuccessfully tried to calm the waters in a prime-time address.

How did things get so bad? It's hard to define the turning point on any issue, but in this case, everything leads back to the 2004 speech.

The president proposed what is in essence a compromise: a set of principles to guide the remaking of the system, including tighter control of the Mexican border and a limited form of amnesty for some illegal immigrants who have been in the country for years.

President Bush didn't waiver much from that stance last week. But the outraged reaction suggests that immigration is an issue like abortion — one where both sides are deeply entrenched, believing in their principles absolutely. And as with abortion, nothing seems to galvanize one side of the immigration debate more than the actions of the other side.

Before the president's speech two years ago, talk-radio hosts across the Southwest had periodically railed at the real or imagined "invasion" of illegal workers across the border. John Kobylt of "The John and Ken Show" on KFI-AM in Los Angeles said illegal immigration had been an occasional topic of his popular drive-time program.

"But that speech, where the president announced he was for amnesty, really set us off," he said. "Our listeners savaged their congressmen with calls and e-mails, and it was running 1,000 to 1 against Bush's proposal."

Though Mr. Bush's re-election campaign quickly focused on war, terrorism and gay marriage, the immigration issue continued to boil, kept alive on talk radio and by politicians in the border states that were struggling with the costs of schools, clinics and jails for the millions of undocumented workers in their states.

Toward the end of 2004, a citizen army known as the Minutemen arose to patrol a border its organizers said had been surrendered to illegal immigrants. The Minutemen staged their first border "action" near Tucson in April 2005, drawing a few hundred volunteers in pickups and R.V.'s, armed chiefly with lawn chairs and binoculars. They were trailed by hundreds of reporters from around the globe who could not resist the tale of Wild West vigilantes. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California governor, praised their movement, and Lou Dobbs of CNN began devoting hours on his evening program to what he calls broken borders.

The Minutemen then faded from view, but others kept the issue alive. Representative Duncan Hunter, a Republican from San Diego, declared that the country was under siege and demanded money for a 15-foot-high wall to separate the two countries.

In the summer of 2005, the governors of Arizona and New Mexico declared states of emergency along the border, complaining that their repeated pleas for additional Border Patrol officers and federal money to pay the costs of illegal immigration had been ignored by Washington.

Bill Richardson, the Democratic governor of New Mexico and a supporter of immigrant rights, said that border state governors do not have the luxury of talking about immigration once every couple of years, when it seems politically advantageous.

"This is a fundamental issue for us," he said in a telephone interview last week. "The states are bearing the brunt of the costs of this problem."

Meanwhile, immigrants and their supporters in the labor movement, civil rights groups and churches were on the defensive, but quietly planning. They supported some elements of the president's plan, but there was little momentum in Congress for comprehensive legislation on immigration.

Working at first behind the scenes, and without the megaphone of the media, these forces created a coalition in favor of broader immigrant rights, including eventual citizenship and access to schools, driver's licenses and health care. The Service Employees Union International and Unite Here, representing garment, hotel and restaurant workers, signed up workers and lobbied the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to join the movement.

They had an ally in the business community, which for years had advocated a relatively free flow of immigration to provide a steady source of low-wage workers.

Their interests came together in a proposal last year by a bipartisan group of senators led by Senators John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat. It adopted some of Mr. Bush's principles, including a guest-worker program and legalization of some illegal workers and their families.

ALL seemed ready to go. Then Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired; Chief Justice William Rehnquist died. The Senate plan stalled as the Judiciary Committee turned to the Supreme Court nominations.

Action shifted to the House in December, where a proposal by Representative James Sensenbrenner, a longtime advocate for stricter immigration controls, inflamed the pro-immigrant base in a way the Senate plan had not.

Mr. Sensenbrenner engineered the House passage of a clumsily drafted bill, known as HR 4437, that would turn all illegal immigrants into felons and criminalize aid to them by welfare or church workers. His name became a Spanish curse.

Mr. Sensenbrenner claims that his bill has been miscast, used to inflame Latinos and their allies. He said the felony provision was a mistake and vowed to correct it. He also said that Roman Catholic nuns did not have to demand a green card before dishing out soup to a hungry immigrant.

"Sister Mary Margaret and Brother Rafael have nothing to worry about," Mr. Sensenbrenner said in an interview. "That's ridiculous and it's a red herring used by people with an agenda."

For immigrant-rights advocates, the Sensenbrenner measure was a gift. Spanish-language disc jockeys took a page from right-wing radio and rallied their audiences.

In Los Angeles, Eduardo Sotelo, who goes by the name El Piolín (Tweety Bird), and Ricardo Sánchez, known as El Mandril (the Baboon), met with other disc jockeys to turn out hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters at a Los Angeles rally in March and at a work and school boycott on May 1.

Other large pro-immigrant rallies took place across the country, spurred by radio messages, union organizers and support from Catholic clergy.

Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy at the National Council of La Raza, a civil rights group, said her organization and others had been trying for years to win passage of an immigration bill including some elements of President Bush's 2004 proposals.

What provided the spark for the giant rallies this spring that finally captured the attention of the public? The Minutemen, the conservative talk-show hosts and the Sensenbrenner bill, she said.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

5.21.06

2006: The year the progressive movement became a movement

There are many reasons to be optimistic these days if you are a progressive. A look accross the 2006 campaign landscape shows that our movement is no longer theoretical - it is very real, and increasing in power every single day. But as the Denver Post today notes in a piece about our growing movement, progressives also face stiff opposition in the form of a corrupt political Establishment desperate to preserve the status quo. The confrontation brewing between this new movement and the Establishment is not to be downplayed - it is escalating, and it will have profound results that go far beyond just one election.

The Denver Post notes that those defending the status quo are, to be sure, entrenched. "Political corruption comes in two varieties," the Post notes. "There are brazen payoffs, and then there is a kind of gooey rot: the venal abandonment of principles, spurred by the favors of corporate lobbyists and the need for campaign cash." Ultimately, "All but the toughest pols and pundits get seduced, and over time, the party establishment starts to stipulate: globalization is a blessing, free trade is sacred, billionaires need tax breaks, job loss is inevitable, workers are expendable, wages will decline, the war in Iraq is necessary."

The Post is absolutely right - there is a "gooey rot." But it is being challenged everywhere you look. Though both parties' Beltway-based political operatives and consultants have tried to downplay what's going on throughout the heartland, we can see the tell-tale signs of a true progressive populist movement emerging - one that is not just a wing of the Democratic Party Establishment in Washington, but an actual movement bubbling up from outside the Beltway, based on real conviction, and serious about seizing power. We see grassroots organizations outside the Beltway like (to name just a few) Moveon.org and the Progressive States Network being built. We see huge numbers of readers purchasing books like Crashing the Gate, How Would a Patriot Act?, Lapdogs, The Motherhood Manifesto and (here comes a bit of shameless self-promotion) Hostile Takeover - readers who want to join the fight. We see millions of daily websurfers learning about the day-to-day political battles at sites like Escaton, Dailykos, MyDD, Common Dreams, Working for Change, the Huffington Post and hundreds of others. We see a crop of aggressive writers like Ari Berman, Matt Taibbi, Chris Hayes, Harold Meyerson, Molly Ivins, Matt Stoller , Chris Bowers and Thomas Frank who reject the mealy-mouthed style of liberal writers in the past, and aren't afraid to infuse their work with conviction and ideology. We see meetings like the Cleaning Up Our Statehouses conference, the YearlyKos convention and the Take Back America conference being overcrowded with attendees. And perhaps most striking, we see major candidates for major office championing the cause.

In two major Senate races, for instance, top-tier candidates Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) are both using their campaigns to put Corporate America's destructive "free" trade policy on trial - a policy pushed by Wall Street Democrats that has undermined Americans' wages, health care/retirement benefits and job security.

Brown recently told the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week that "People who like these trade agreements typically are very insulated. They're economists in ivory towers. They are journalists in wood-paneled editorial boards. It's senators and presidents who rely on major corporate campaign contributors and don't walk through those factories where workers are so anxious about job loss." Brown is running in arguably the most important Senate race in the most politically important state in America - and, unlike other high-profile Democrats in the Senate club, he's not running to embrace right-wing ideologues - he's instead running as an unabashed progressive. As he told the Washington Post, "This is a chance to change the direction of the state and the country [because] it can show a progressive Democrat can win in a state like Ohio. It's going to show that in 2008, there's a very different political dynamic in this country."

Similarly, Tester told the Billings Gazette that he's sick and tired of "free" trade deals being justified by those who dishonestly claim these pacts help farmers - a courageous stand in an agricultural region, and in a state where both U.S. Senators are ardent supporters of "free" trade. "As a farmer, you better believe [corporate-written trade deals] are a problem," he said. "The current market is just plain unfair. The United States has been pushing us into free trade agreements that have been hurting Montana workers and Montana farmers, and resulting in the outsourcing of jobs. We need to be engaging in fair trade so that everybody is playing on a level field. This is an issue I'll work hard on because it's important to Montana and it personally hits home with me."

The same thing is happening on Iraq. In Connecticut, first-time statewide candidate Ned Lamont (D) exceeded steep expectations and dramatically vaulted onto the primary ballot to challenge Sen. Joe Lieberman - the guy who has spent the last three years making headlines as the chief Senate advocate for the Iraq War, and chief attacker of those who have opposed it. Lieberman and his corporate-funded sponsors at the Democratic Leadership Council in Washington are now in an apoplectic frenzy, frothing like rabid dogs to national reporters, complaining about their plight, fearing that the ordinary citizens they so despise have broken down the palace gates. They should be afraid - we have broken in, and come primary day in August, we're headed for the throne room to depose Lieberman.

Even some courageous leaders in the Establishment are taking notice of our new movement, and are reacting favorably. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D), for instance, "has informed colleagues that she intends to force Rep. Jane Harman (D) to step down" from the intelligence committee, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pelosi made the announcement after many Democrats expressed concern "that Harman is too moderate and inclined to accommodate the Republican agenda." And remember - Pelosi's move has not come in a vacuum. It comes as Harman faces a primary challenge in her Los Angeles-area district from Marcy Winograd (D), who is hammering Harman for her aggressive support of the Iraq War.

Not surprisingly, much of this movement building has been met with disdain from the pundit class's top Establishment mouthpieces. Time Magazine's Joe Klein, for instance, used a recent column to call senior progressive African American Members of Congress "embarrassments," and then proceeded to hurl racially charged insults at them on behalf of the GOP. His column was a disgusting and not-so-subtly veiled effort to scare the public about who will be in control of Congress if the progressive movement continues to build power.

Top New York Times columnists have (albeit, without the racial component) ably backed up Klein's attacks on the progressive movement. For example, Thomas Friedman appeared on television again this week trying to extend the Iraq War and American troops' deployment there. Thankfully, watchdog groups nailed him for his dishonesty. Friedman also this week penned another in a long line of public service announcements trumpeting the benefits of eliminating American jobs and shipping them overseas. It's Tom Friedman as Corporate America's paid public relations flack.

The Times' David Brooks chimed in with Friedman. In a recent screed, Brooks was shocked - shocked! - that ordinary people are unhappy about the economy. Brooks, a conservative Bobo in Paradise, just cannot understand why when the stock market is doing well and overall GDP growth is steady the vast majority of citizens outside his comfortable, country-club-Republican life on the New York-DC cocktail party circuit are not as thrilled as he is. "Forget about wage, benefit and job cuts ordinary folks are suffering through," Brooks seems to be saying, "Let them all eat cake while I slurp down another glass of scotch, puff on my cigar, and marvel at my new silk ascot." And, of course, he says we must look down on those movement builders who want real change. "The pseudopopulist renegades who rail against the establishment are being eclipsed by the canny establishmentarians," Brooks breathlessly claimed. "They're the ones who know how to use the levers of government to get things done." If only he had said "get things done exclusively for rich elitists like me" he might have actually displayed a bit of honesty.

Thankfully, our movement is sturdy. It flourishes without approval of the powers that be - which is why it is so frightening to the Establishment. Ours is a movement that has seized the year 2006, and finally declared that it is time to put core conviction ahead partisanship, and time to ignore the insulated, arrogant know-it-alls who populate the cushy confines of Washington's think tanks, Capitol Hill offices and pundit circles - the know-it-alls who either have never worked on winning campaigns or who have consistently worked on losing campaigns yet spout off as if they were campaign gurus; the know-it-alls who pocket corporate cash and then tell Democrats to bow down to the corporate forces that are waging a war on our country's middle class; the know-it-alls who told Democrats to embrace the Iraq War, because neither they nor their families have to personally bear the blood-and-guts consequences of the policies they advocate; the know-it-alls who, in short, are trying to sell out America.

To be sure, this is a long battle against powerful forces. But as I note in the conclusion of my new book Hostile Takeover, the new movement we are building is on the side of history. "In one way or another, every great American social movement has been about people taking back their government," the book concludes. "Once again, America must find its voice, and act on its justifiable outrage – an outrage that comes with being abused by politicians and cheated by the establishment, insulted with lies, and denied honest answers. It is that outrage which has fueled our past battles. And it is that outrage that will always lead this country to a better future."

Posted by David Sirota at 2:51 PM

© 2006 Working Assets. All rights reserved.

He also denied that authorities would randomly check journalists' records on domestic-to-domestic phone calls in an effort to find journalists' confidential sources.

"We don't engage in domestic-to-domestic surveillance without a court order," Gonzales said, under a "probable cause" legal standard.

But he added that the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security. If the government's probe into the NSA leak turns up criminal activity, prosecutors have an "obligation to enforce the law."

"It can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," Gonzales told ABC's "This Week."

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc.

Ross also revealed that the surveillance has had a chilling effect on his sources, who now risk being exposed:

I’m working on a big story now with people who are confidential sources inside the Federal Air Marshal Service. They were all alarmed that they might be exposed as talking with me in violation of rules. So it’s of great concern.

Watch it:

Full transcript below:

KURTZ: How did you find out that the administration is tracking your phone calls and those of other journalists?

ROSS: Well, a confidential source and a leak, and a very good tip that was surprising to us. Someone told — a senior federal official told my colleague, Rich Esposito, that “We know who you are calling; you should get some new cell phones and quick.” That’s what we know, Howard. We don’t know how it is they know who we’re calling. We’ve been trying to figure that out. But this source is so good that we take it very seriously.

KURTZ: Just on a personal level, how did you — what was your reaction to learn that law enforcement officials, according to this source, are analyzing the numbers that you dial — presumably in an effort to track down your other confidential sources?

ROSS: You know, I guess as an abstract, we always thought that was likely or possible, but once I actually heard this specific information — and this person knew a couple of specific calls — it was truly alarming and made you think, well, my gosh — what are we going to do about this? It means a lot more in-person visits. I’m working on a big story now with people who are confidential sources inside the Federal Air Marshal Service. They were all alarmed that they might be exposed as talking with me in violation of rules. So it’s of great concern.

KURTZ: What other news organizations are being — having their phone calls tracked, according to your informant?

ROSS: We were told reporters at “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post,” and it seemed consistent with the information we know, that the CIA has made several criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, the FBI, based on stories that the “Post” and the “Times” have run about CIA secret prisons and the Jim Risen story at “The New York Times” about NSA wiretapping. In both cases, those agencies have confirmed that criminal investigations have begun. And when we checked with the FBI, they put out a statement that essentially said, We take logical investigative steps, starting with the phone records of the government agencies. And then you sort of read through and parse out what they say, it seems that if they go after reporters, they say they do it in a legal fashion.

KURTZ: Not exactly a hard denial. Were you given any names of journalists who might be on the receiving end of this?

ROSS: Other than Esposito and Ross, no. But I’m assuming your colleague, Dana Priest, and Rison and others at the “Times,” who have done a lot of important work that involved information that the CIA, I assume, presumes to be classified and they see that as a violation of the law. And that starts the process by which they essentially can use provisions of the Patriot Act if they chose, or just a grand jury, to pursue it. And it makes me feel, in a way — and this is, I think, the disturbing part — as if we are drug dealers or terrorists trying to traffic in information, and should we be using bags full of quarters like old Mafia capos to avoid having our phone calls traced? I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong; I don’t think any other reporter is, either. We’re trying to cover these stories, which are difficult, but which are very important.

Posted by Nico May 21, 2006 11:48 am

© 2005-2006 Center for American Progress Action Fund

In the Black(water)

by JEREMY SCAHILL

[from the June 5, 2006 issue]

Tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims remain without homes. The environment is devastated. People are disenfranchised. Financial resources, desperate residents are told, are scarce. But at least New Orleans has a Wal-Mart parking lot serving as a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center with perhaps the tightest security of any parking lot in the world. That's thanks to the more than $30 million Washington has shelled out to the Blackwater USA security firm since its men deployed after Katrina hit. Under contract with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Federal Protective Service, Blackwater's men are ostensibly protecting federal reconstruction projects for FEMA. Documents show that the government paid Blackwater $950 a day for each of its guards in the area. Interviewed by The Nation last September, several of the company's guards stationed in New Orleans said they were being paid $350 a day. That would have left Blackwater with $600 per man, per day to cover lodging, ammo, other overhead--and profits.

Shortly after the hurricane hit, Blackwater "launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans," says company vice chairman Cofer Black. "We saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn't have been saved. And, as a result of that, we've had a very positive experience." Indeed. It was only days after the company arrived that it started reeling in lucrative deals.

According to Blackwater's government contracts, obtained by The Nation, from September 8 to September 30, 2005, Blackwater was paid $409,000 for providing fourteen guards and four vehicles to "protect the temporary morgue in Baton Rouge, LA." That contract kicked off a hurricane boon for Blackwater. From September to the end of December 2005, the government paid Blackwater at least $33.3 million--well surpassing the amount of Blackwater's contract to guard Ambassador Paul Bremer when he was head of the US occupation of Iraq. And the company has likely raked in much more in the hurricane zone. Exactly how much is unclear, as attempts to get information on Blackwater's current contracts in New Orleans have been unsuccessful.

"We saw the costs, in terms of accountability and dollars, for this practice in Iraq, and now we are seeing it in New Orleans," says Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky, who has been one of Blackwater's few critics in Congress. "They have again given a sweetheart contract--without an open bidding process--to a company with close ties to the Administration."

After The Nation exposed Blackwater's operations in New Orleans this past fall [see "Blackwater Down," October 10, 2005], Schakowsky and a handful of other Congress members raised questions about the scandal. They entered the report into the Congressional Record during hearings on Katrina and cited it in letters to DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner, who then began an inquiry. In letters to Congressional offices in February, Skinner defended the Blackwater deal, asserting that it was "appropriate" for the government to contract with the company. Skinner admitted that "the ongoing cost of the contract...is clearly very high" and then quietly dropped a bombshell: "It is expected that FEMA will require guard services on a relatively long-term basis (two to five years)." Two to five years? Already most of the 330 federally contracted private guards in the hurricane zone are working for Blackwater, according to the Washington Post. Another firm, DynCorp, is also trying to grab more of the action, offering its security services for less than $700 per day per guard.

The hurricane's aftermath has ushered in the homecoming of the "war on terror," a contract bonanza whereby companies can reap massive Iraq-like profits without leaving the country and at a minuscule fraction of the risk. To critics of the government's handling of the hurricane, the message is clear.

"That's what happens when the victims are black folks vilified before and after the storm--instead of aid, they get contained," says Chris Kromm, executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies and an editor of Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch. "If officials really cared about protecting the people of New Orleans, they wouldn't be giving millions to scandal-ridden contractors. They would have given the city money to rebuild their levees to withstand more than a Category 2 Hurricane. They still haven't done that--and hurricane season is upon us."

Kromm alleges that vital projects that have "gotten zero or little money" in New Orleans include: job creation, hospital and school reconstruction, affordable housing and wetlands restoration. Even in this context, DHS continues to defend the Blackwater contract. In a March 1 memo to FEMA, Matt Jadacki, the DHS Special Inspector General for Gulf Coast Hurricane Recovery, wrote that the Federal Protective Service considered Blackwater "the best value to the government."

While companies like Halliburton may have raked in more profits since George W. Bush took office, few have seen growth as dramatic as Blackwater's. The firm has been at the front of the line at the domestic and international taxpayer-funded feeding troughs and has recently hired some high-profile former government officials, like Cofer Black, former chief of CIA counterterrorism, and former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz. In March Black represented Blackwater at a conference in Jordan, announcing that the company was seeking to broaden its role in even more conflict zones. Blackwater is rapidly expanding its operations, creating a new surveillance-blimp division, launching new training facilities in California and the Philippines, and increasingly setting its sights on the lucrative world of DHS contracts. It is clamoring to get into Darfur and has also hired Chilean troops trained under the brutal rule of Augusto Pinochet. "We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals," company president Gary Jackson told the Guardian. "The Chilean commandos are very, very professional, and they fit within the Blackwater system." The business magazine Fast Company recently named Jackson one of its "Fast 50," predicting that the company and its president are in for "a very strong (and long) decade."

It's hard to imagine that the cronyism that has marked the Bush Administration is not at play in Blackwater's success. Blackwater founder Erik Prince shares Bush's fundamentalist Christian views. He comes from a powerful Michigan Republican family and social circle, and his father, Edgar, helped Gary Bauer start the Family Research Council. According to a report prepared for The Nation by the Center for Responsive Politics, in all of Erik Prince's political funding ge