Rabble Rouser

GET THE MARIJUANA MONKEY OFF OF OUR BACKS

“During my 18 years as a Michigan police officer I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of marijuana. Whatever the science says about what good or harm it does, it is a horrendous waste of good police time chasing adult users and sellers. We have crimes which have a real victim going unsolved because we spend so much time on pot. Child porn comes to mind. Give marijuana roughly the same regulations and restrictions as alcohol and tobacco. Get this monkey off our backs!”

Officer Howard J. Wooldridge ( retired ) is an Educational Specialist for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition in Washington D.C.

LYING BASTARD UPDATE

A report by the Office National Drug Control Policy said that frequent marijuana ingestion doubles a teen’s risk of depression and anxiety, based on data compiled from published studies.

Pressed at a news conference about the report’s claim that, “Using marijuana can cause depression and other mental illnesses,” Walters demurred and acknowledged there is no proof one leads to another.

According to the Denver Post, John Walters has the most useless job in Washington.

– posted by Walter F. Wouk for Rabble Rouser

The world is a better place because of George W. Bush’s presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney assured Oklahoma Republicans on Friday evening. “When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president,” Cheney said.

“The world is a better place because of George Bush!” Excuse me while I puke.

Journalist, Dave Lindorff, reports that George Bush’s way of making the world a better place reads like “a laundry list of international crimes, the Crime Against Peace and Conspiracy against Peace in the UN Charter, to Geneva Convention violations such as approval of torture of prisoners, collective punishment of civilians, the killing of children and child soldiers, the failure to protect occupied citizens, the use of banned weapons, etc., etc., and also of domestic crimes, ranging from political use of government employees, conspiracy, treason, lying to federal officials, defrauding Congress, etc.”

Predictably, George Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors” haven’t offended his Republican base. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll (taken April 18th through April 20th), 66% of Republicans polled support the policies of the Bush regime — at least they do in private.

There isn’t a Republican official where I live (rural upstate New York) that has “the balls” to praise George Bush in public. They’re running for re-election — and away from their boy, George.

They can read the writing on the wall, and it tells them that 69% of Americans disapprove of George Bush’s policies. So, don’t expect these “local Yokels” to muster up the courage to stand by their man — at least not in public.

– Walter F. Wouk for Rabble Rouser

In January of this year, despite all the well intentioned but tardy efforts of the Board of Elections, the US Justice Department seized control of the New York State voting machine selection process.

When the State BOE met in the third week of January they were struggling to retain some semblance of their bureaucratic identity while complying with the Federal District Court’s directives. Impeded by an absolute partisan split, Judge Sharpe’s corrupting time schedule, and a limited offering of Ballot Marking Devices to choose from, the board was initially able to approve only one BMD for purchase by the county Boards of Elections.

The January meeting of the NYS BOE was concurrent with the Election Commissioners Association meeting in Saratoga. With practically all counties represented at that venue most NY County Election Commissioners immediately signed on for the one BMD choice, the Sequoia ImageCast offered by Sequoia Voting Systems (SVS Inc.) of Denver, CO.

Despite the success of vendors’ legal challenges which eventually allowed other choices almost ninety percent of NY Counties and all but one upstate county have maintained their selection of the Sequoia machine. The Justice Department has indicated they will not allow any additional changes.

The Sequoia ImageCast is a ballot marking device combined with a ballot scanner that is capable of tabulating votes. It was, at the time of selection, a new assemblage of devices which had not undergone any testing in NY. The scanner portion of this machine is the result of Sequoia’s collaboration with Dominion Voting, Ontario Canada. It is Sequoia’s other interests and obligations which have recently surfaced that are of more serious concern.

Posting on ComputerWorld.com and his own blog Brad Friedman reports that almost simultaneously with Sequoia’s NY success a competitor voting equipment company, Hart InterCivic Inc. of Austin TX, launched a hostile takeover of S.V.S. Inc. And we learn that the takeover is facilitated by Sequoia’s two million dollar obligation to their former parent company, Smartmatic Inc., an offshore consortium with ties to the Venezuelan government. www.bradblog.com/?p=5885

Sequoia claimed to have severed ties with Smartmatic after the Smartmatic CEO was denied entry by Homeland Security and, presumably, to avoid a critical review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). However, it now seems that Hart InterCivic wants to purchase that two million dollar lever as their initial volley in the takeover bid. They may be well on their way to accomplishing that goal by the time you read this.

Mr. Friedman had previously reported, on March 27th, that an unresolved whistle-blower initiated fraud complaint against Hart InterCivic will now be allowed to go forward after being held up for months by the Justice Department. In this litigation Hart is accused of committing fraud by presenting their election software and machines as secure and reliable even though they knew otherwise. www.bradblog.com/?p=5847

Hart InterCivic has a partner company which provides the software side of their package: SOE Software of Tampa FL. A brief visit to their web page www.soesoftware.com reveals that two of their top management team have previous business relationships with Mobil, Sperry Univac, General Dynamic, IBM, Raytheon, AT&T, MCI and Motorola. This does not give me hope for tamper free elections should Hart have any access to our votes.

Regardless of how this corporate war ends it seems obvious that New York State should take another look at their hopeful voting equipment vendors. The BOE and the State Comptrollers Office have to do a new Vendor Responsibility Investigation (at this writing do not know if this investigation was originally done as required). This investigation would rightly be triggered by either the foreign financial interest in Sequoia or the vendor substitution by Hart, especially since both vendors have been untruthful or are now accused of being untruthful. Don’t expect this to happen. Even if the State did do an investigation the Bush Justice Dept. would render it moot.

More importantly, we need to consider what this is all about, and it’s not only about the immediate profit from the sale of voting machines. It’s about power and the possibility of much greater future profits. No one knows better than the machine manufacturers and vendors how efficient computerized vote counting can be for controlling elections.

If you doubt this analysis please consider how much money the presidential candidates are spending on their campaigns. That’s what control of vote counting is worth, again and again, year after year.

So where does this leave the New York State voters?

Most election integrity activists considered the ImageCast BMD/scanner choice a victory in that it practically and fiscally guaranteed we would be voting on paper ballots in 2009. Not having to cast our ballots using a direct recording electronic voting machine and instead having the inherently verifiable paper ballot is a win, but only a partial win. Our remaining problem is reliance on a software controlled scanner and election management computer programs, all susceptible to manipulation by a variety of untrustworthy corporate actors, election insiders and technocrats, to count our votes.

Unable to rely on state bureaucracies, the Justice Department or Federal Courts to protect us from the threats to voting integrity privatization and lack of transparency represents, the task falls to us. As citizens we have to assume responsibility for the vote count. The verifiable paper ballot is of no service to election integrity unless they are counted by the voters themselves. A scanner using open source software and maintained by municipal workers might be used to confirm the count but the official count has to be the one performed by citizens, at the polling place upon closing of the polls.

I do like to end on a positive note with an action suggestion. We should slaughter the golden goose and disappoint all the wolves that are circling us. We can ban the scanners and decide to hand count the paper ballots. If we did that the wolves would quickly lose interest. Then we will need only to concern ourselves with dealing with each other instead of the corporations.
– Wayne Stintson for Rabble Rouser

As the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary nears last week the Hillary Clinton Hell Hath No Fury Campaign released tax returns indicating her and Bill earned over $100 million dollars from 2000 through 2006 begging the question: just how does she appeal to blue collar workers without bullshitting them that she feels their pain. In response the Obama campaign kept the high moral ground by not pouncing on the glaring chasm between the Clintons rhetoric of empty empathy and the reality of the Clinton wealth.

In an attempt to explain his trouble appealing to the working class Sen. Obama recently said that there are a lot of people in small towns who are angry and bitter because they feel left behind and “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

With nonchalant ease and without a trace of shame Senator Clinton appeared comfortable in the slop and spin of the political gutter as she accused Sen. Obama of being “…elitist and out of touch” and “…not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans”.

This from a candidate so “out of touch” with reality that she cannot mathematically win the Democratic nomination for president without being divisive because her campaign was poorly managed from day one being ill equipped to deal with life after the first Super Tuesday that they resorted to daily redefining reality by repeating the mantra mirror, mirror on the wall what favors Hillary above all others.

How ironic that the person who wants to become the first woman president, indeed even feels entitled to the position, accuses her Democratic opponent of the elitism which is no different from the label of elitism that Republicans have for decades used to describe, to define and to demonize Democrats.

In fact today John McCain did precisely that. In response to Sen. Obama’s speech that has Sen. Clinton performing like a drama queen, Sen. McCain claimed that Sen. Obama was out of touch with the public. Can you imagine that - two months ago during a Republican debate the straight talkin’ media created loveable old maverick, John McCain, said we were better off now than we were seven years ago - now that’s out of touch with reality when just the other day a poll found that 78 percent of Americans thought we were worse off. So who is really out of touch with the American people?

One can hardly resist the urge to suggest that Hillary Clinton is Joe Lieberman with tits as a clever way of describing a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Ironically the only real Republican at that debate and the only real straight talker said we were not better off. That was Ron Paul the real maverick that the press ignored while covering their own creation who was squatting and grunting more often than not when George Bush commanded him to shit and support nonsense like the surge is working and he’s on top of the economy.

Although Hillary is fond of saying when Obama speaks “it’s only words” apparently Obama’s observation is a convenient Clinton family exception to the rule as well as a disingenuous attempt to obscure and conceal her own elitism found in her words like “I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies,” she said. “Now, Americans who believe in the Second Amendment believe it’s a matter of constitutional right. Americans who believe in God believe it’s a matter of personal faith.

Who the hell is Hillary Clinton to define the values and beliefs of Americans and claim they exist for society at large? How presumptuous, how pompous, how elitist for her to believe that she has those distinctive attributes which qualify her views on any matter to be taken more seriously?

We weren’t all raised in the Midwest, as such most Americans weren’t raised with Midwestern values, just what those Midwestern values are that Sen. Clinton claims she was raised on no one in the press even bothered to ask? And not all Americans acted like good Germans who shared her “unshakable faith in America and its policies” certainly not as they were applied abroad to Vietnam, South America, Central America and the drug war that further eroded our constitutional liberties here at home.

Indeed, Sen. Clinton’s elitist world view even excluded many Americans who believe the Second Amendment applies to a well regulated militia and not individual citizens as well as excluding the many Americans who believe in the separation of church and state.

Sen. Clinton’s hysterical response to Sen. Obama’s observation is only the words spoken by the self appointed Queen of the Democratic Party: mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the most electable of all? But this isn’t a fairy tale that can come true, there is no voice coming from the mirror, there is only the reflection of a bitter divisive woman scorned.

– John Pagoda for Rabble Rouser

Two weeks ago a poll indicated that 43 percent of the public feels worse off now than they were four years ago Mortgage delinquencies hit a 23 year high, home foreclosures soared to an all-time record in the 4^th quarter of 07, oil reached an all time high today and will go higher tomorrow, gas increases at the pump are expected to reach $4.00 a gallon soon never again to reach the 3 something a gallon, the cost of food will rise exponentially, the value of the dollar is daily dropping like a rock, college loans are becoming less available and less affordable for a growing number of students who weren’t left behind before but now increasingly feel they’ve got no place to go here in the homeland, unemployment is growing and will continue to increase as more jobs are outsourced to places that can maximize corporate profits with cheaper labor and banks are bailed out by taxpayers who don’t get bailed out when they’re going broke.

American families are broken and crushed beneath the wheel of unfettered capitalism in a trickle down Republican economic welfare state for the rich rubber stamped by the opposition party that seems to have no problem finding 12 billion dollars every month to finance the war that was based on at least 935 documented lies one of which was that the war would pay for itself or the nearly 30 billion it took to bail out Bear Stearns over the weekend while for the last several months Republicans and Democrats alike can’t agree to give one brown penny to a dwindling middle class drowning in debt.

The other day John McCain gave a speech on his perception of the problems facing our economy, offered his solution and provided a view of his approach to the relationship between the government and the people which in essence is stay the course and not only maintain the status quo but offer more tax breaks for corporations without ever asking how this perpetual war on terrorism will be financed. In addition he doesn’t believe the government should bail out people who make mistakes but he had no problem with the government bailing out an investment bank that made a mistake which adversely affected a large number of people. John McCain’s idea about the relationship between government and the people who give their consent is not what Jefferson had in mind.

43 percent of the public feels worse off now than they were four years ago because the reality is that they are worse off and in 4 more years we’ll be much worse off if we stay the course where the rich get richer and poor become poorer. The John McCain who admits to not knowing that much about the economy that George Bush says his administration is on top of will not only extend the Bush tax cuts he will also increase tax cuts to the corporations. How much will we have to borrow to pay for this hundred year war, from who will we borrow, who will have to pay it back and how will they do it are questions that no one asks John McCain or anyone else who supports preemptive war.

Given the abysmal state of our economy and John McCain’s propensity to stay the course one would think that it would be a slam dunk for the Democrats to take the White House and increase their majorities in both the House and the Senate yet the unsettled Democratic primary threatens not only to make the absurdity of another Republican administration a reality but to break the Democratic Party beyond repair unless Hillary Clinton puts the Democratic Party and the American people before her own political ambitions.

Mathematically Sen. Hillary Clinton cannot win the total number of states, nor the number of delegates, nor more than likely the popular vote that is without the support of Republicans who vote for her in open elections or switch political party affiliation such as that which is occurring in present day Pa. to vote for her urged on by Rush Limbaugh to further divide the Democratic Party by providing a reason and an excuse for Sen. Clinton to pursue her candidacy the only way it can be successful by any means necessary including using divisive Republican tactics of fear mongering phone calls at 3am in Texas and race bating in Pa. Indeed hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

At this point in the Democratic Primary it appears Sen. Obama has an insurmountable lead and will eventually be the Democratic Party presidential candidate. Sen. Clinton’s continued efforts to challenge this fact is in and of itself divisive and what we need in the United States today is not division – not when our economy is collapsing, when prices are increasing disproportionate to wages, when a consumer oriented society can no longer afford to consume and our military is bogged down in third world countries

If the Democratic Party really wants to slam dunk the 08 election rather than continue this contest and its foregone conclusion Sen. Clinton should put her party before her own political ambition, withdraw from the race, and pledge complete support for Sen. Obama who should also put the party values before his own political ambitions by offering Hillary Clinton to be his running mate,. For the sake of party unity she should accept and together they can change the politics as usual which created conditions for a state of perpetual war that insures huge profits for the military industrial complex and its share holders that eventually resulted in our free falling economy because as a nation we can no longer afford to finance the failed policies of a Republican Party that is out of touch with reality

– John Pagoda for Rabble Rouser

The art work of Boz Mugabe, Rabble Rouser’s illustrator and reviewer at large, will be on display at the Ballina Arts Centre (Co. Mayo, Ireland) until March 29th.

Boz is political cartoonist for the Irish Independent. He’s the former editor and publisher of Nosebleed Magazine, Bassist for the, now defunct, Steam Pig and he currently plays Bass for the Irish rock band, Yurt.

According to a report by Truthout.org a group of closet Republicans known as The Blue Dog Democrats

have devised a plan to grant legal immunity to telecommunication companies that cooperated with the Bush regime’s illegal surveillance of “we the people.”

The Quislings and Collaborators who support the Bush regime’s war on our civil liberties are:

Congressman Joe Baca (D-California) http://www.house.gov/baca/

Congressman John Barrow (D-Georgia) http://barrow.house.gov/

Congresswoman Melissa Bean (D-Illinois) http://www.house.gov/bean/

Congressman Marion Berry (D-Arkansas) http://www.house.gov/berry/

Congressman Dan Boren (D-Oklahoma) http://www.house.gov/boren/

Congressman Leonard L. Boswell (D-Iowa) http://boswell.house.gov/

Congressman Allen Boyd (D-Florida) http://www.house.gov/boyd/

Congressman Christopher Carney (D-Pennsylvania) http://carney.house.gov/

Congressman Jim Cooper (D-Tennessee) http://www.cooper.house.gov/

Congressman Robert E. Cramer (D-Alabama) http://cramer.house.gov/HoR/AL05/

Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-Tennessee) http://www.house.gov/lincolndavis/

Congressman Brad Ellsworth (D-Indiana) http://www.ellsworth.house.gov/

Congressman Tim Holden (D-Pennsylvania) http://www.holden.house.gov/

Congressman Jim Matheson, (D-Utah) http://www.house.gov/matheson/

Congressman Charlie Melancon (D-Louisiana) http://www.melancon.house.gov/

Congressman Dennis Moore (D-Kansas) http://www.moore.house.gov/

Walter F. Wouk for Rabble Rouser

Paper Ballots are indeed a necessary component…

but not sufficient to produce trustworthy elections. Yes, we paper ballot advocates have been successful. This first major battle, hard fought over the past 4 years, is a win for the election integrity groups fighting against the direct recording electronic voting machines (DRE) in New York State.

The most recent, and hopefully the last, deadline for local election officials to report their choice for 2008 equipment purchases passed last week. All but one of the 62 New York State counties have selected ballot marking devices (BMD) compatible with paper ballots. And lawmakers in Hamilton County might still intercede to prevent their county from being the only DRE county in the state.

The BMDs will be deployed this year in partial compliance with the so-called Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The courts have dictated that New York must accomodate disabled voters at every polling place this year. Complete HAVA compliance is to be achieved in 2009 and the choices made this year indicate that paper ballots will be the final HAVA solution.

Paper ballots make fraud free elections POSSIBLE……. they certainly do not provide anything near a guarantee of same. Several prominent writers have argued that the current concern about the voting machines are a distraction from the real problems. Those problems being various forms of voter misinformation, disenfranchisement and intimidation which have occurred over the years regardless of the machinery used. Suffice it to say there are many people, some of them serving as election officials, who are not committed to democracy and can not be trusted to protect the integrity of the vote.

Protecting the integrity of the vote is our job…and the job is far from done. Our efforts must now turn to the many other devices, conditions and actors which stand in the way of true democratic and honest elections. The conversation has already started concerning such things as effective audits, secure chain of custody procedures, reform of election administration, and greater transparency for the entire process. As activists we surely will continue our advocacy for better elections and press for the needed changes.

One of the most effective actions we can take requires no new laws or large expenditures of cash. What is needed is a commitment to democracy and a willingness to contribute to community. Citizens must become involved in our elections to a much greater degree than we have. As individuals we can volunteer to serve as Election Inspectors and Poll Watchers or work at get out the vote programs. As members of community service organizations we can urge the organizations to support such efforts.

It seems necessary to state the obvious: We can not complain about the lack of transparency if we’re not there to see, and we can not contribute to improved administration if we are not there to discover how the job is done and what needs to change. For democracy and election integrity we have to be there.

Wayne Stinson (Coordinator) for The Voting Integrity Project,