Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Presidents' Day is part of National Condom Week (February 14 – 21), so you should send a condom to Africa in W's name. Because you know he won't do it himself, despite his sudden interest in "preventing" AIDS.
Tragic results will arise from the Republican insistence on pretending that viral diseases have moral causes. Here's an overview of their death-dealing War on Condoms (pdf file from Planned Parenthood).
The matter-of-fact sexuality depicted in the sign above reveals the lack of human reality in the administration's standard approach. People have sex — sometimes without the sanction of church or state. Get over it, you big babies. Because you Republicans auctioned off your power base to radical Christians (not to mention your implicit racism as a party), millions of lives are at stake, and millions more orphans will roam the African continent.
Links via Uppity-Negro.com via Long story; short pier.
Dept. of Told You So: We anticipated a faith-and-abstinence bullshit followup to W's bogus $15 billion for AIDS in Africa "cure" in this post on the State of the Union address. See also David E's blow-by-blow response to W's oral report.
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Favorite antiwar protest signs:Texas of Evil
Class Warfare Now!
I love my dad too, but jeez!
9-11: 15 Saudis , 0 Iraqis
Don't Mess With Mesopotamia
"It takes a child to raze a village."
"NY GAYS DON'T WANT BUSH"
LESBIANS SAY "I HATE DICK"
Draft the Bush Twins!
One nation under surveillance
How did our oil get underneath their sand? From WNYC via URLDJ.
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Is right-wing media bias a loss leader? Sometimes right-wing press bias simply makes no demographic or business sense. Does it then serve as a strategic move to intentionally lose short-term money in the interest of building a long-term opinion monopoly?
That's the impression I got from this letter to Chicago Magazine's Press Box by Steve Rhodes (scroll down):Did you catch the columnist line-up in the Commentary section of the Sunday [Chicago] Sun-Times? It featured Bob Novak, George Will, Mark Steyn, and Betsy Hart, not to mention a guest column from the editor of the Jerusalem Post under the headline: 'Liberals Just Refuse to Evolve.' Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading all the above columnists except Hart, but how about giving the other side some space?
The hard right turn at the S-T under Hollinger has me thinking that no newspaper in America is more politically out of step with its readership. Think about it, approximately one-third of the S-T’s audience is African-American, and a hefty portion of the White readership is made up of Democratic-leaning, city-dwellers. Don't forget, Al Gore won every single city ward and Rod Blagojevich lost just one. Only one of Chicago's 50 aldermen is Republican and not a single member of the Chicago delegation in the general assembly is a Republican. Chicago might be the most Democratic city in America, and its newspaper of record (the Trib is a suburban paper) keeps moving to the right.
Can a newspaper keep feeding its readers a diet of opinions that they reject every election day? Force-fed opinions are the evident goal of such bad business decision-making. Eventually, the tidal wave of right-wing prejudice and conjecture is intended to erode Chicagoans' natural tendencies toward Democratic values like fairness, decency and inclusion. Not that Chicago is especially unique — the journalistic tilt to the right is happening throughout the US. It's just odd to observe in a city as Democratic as this one, as the letter-writer notes.
The time to reinvent the distribution of journalism may be upon us. Thoughts? Email me.
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Monday, February 17, 2003
"A tiny mutation in a gene common to mammals may have changed the destiny of humanity. The gene, foxp2 - identified by British researchers two years ago - could have been the switch that lit up art, culture and social behaviour in Homo sapiens 50,000 years ago." —The Guardian
This story begs the question: How quickly can Republicans be engineered to catch up?
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Dispatch from the Home Depot trenches. This is a friend of a friend's emailed account of what it was like to be an employee at Home Depot last Thursday (lightly edited for length and broken into paragraphs, but otherwise unaltered):I was truly entertained today at work. At the HOME DEPOT! From the minute I walked into work this morning at around a quarter to 7 I was stampeded by a herd of woman… all panick stricken about the high terroist alert and accompanied with a government shopping list in hand.
Located right across from my department stands the paint department. This was the happening place to be today. ... Where all the plastic sheeting used for paint drop clothes is on display and in stock for. Not only was this a top demand but equally was the duck tape. Located in the same aisle. These people were all literally nuts.
They presumed I was the expert on the subject. As if I personally had a government connection and new what grade of sheeting was the best for a biological attack. I would tell them "They tell me you need at least 6mil grade to handle anthrax and 4mil to block out mustard gas. Nothing I have is good for radiation"
Some believed me, some gave me a cutesy dirty look. Sad, but true. And I might regret ripping on these people when they are found dead tomorrow morning. After they all suffocate themselves and die of anoxia after they duck tape wrap there precious little abodes. These people live very sad sad tales. It makes you think why the government is not focusing on how they can help these poor lost souls.
I would even make them more neuratic by telling them that to really be affective blocking out these agents you really need to cover your chimney because any hole or air intake coming from the outside would wipe you out right away anyway. Which is true. I did research. Hilarious! These people... They probably go home.... maybe straighten up the house a little bit, wait for their children to come home from school and just WORRY their lives away. And I thought I was neuratic.
Let me just put it this way... These people all have an illness and need to be medicated. Or maybe they are already medicated and just screwed up because of that. Whatever the case may be. So there I am trying to crack jokes with them... trying to have a little fun with them. And more importantly trying to Push Sales. Because it's my job.
I kept Reminding them that tomorrow is Valentines day. And what a better gift to give then duct tape and plastic sheeting. That really shows how much you care for someone close to you. Some bought into this bullshit. Which thrilled me even more. I almost got my rocks off. Playing it serious on the outside but laughing my ass off on the inside. Duct tape and plastic the gift that keeps on giving. But the majority were humourless. Serious to no end. Stricktly business. Needed to get the tape and sheets before they were all sold out. Stock piling there baskets like the end of the world was here or the sky was falling. Then I thought to myself, is this how they act come Holiday time when they have to find the Tickle-Me-Elmo or earlier yet, the Cabbage Patch Kid. It has to be on or pretty close to the same level.
At the same time I was having fun with these people I was also feeling very sad. Thinking why did the government share this info and make all these people nuts. Why couldn't he just tell the local government to be on the look-out. Then I thought... Duct tape is probably the most useful fixer-upper on this planet. Now there is a shortage of it. For every roll we sold today it's a win for the terroist's. Now, when I really could use a roll there won't be any. Little boy who cried wolf. Pallet after pallet was taken down. The reach truck went the full mile today. By three o'clock ALL GONE.
But thats when the laughs got even more out of control. I even had to excuse myself to the bathroom because I could not control myself. I was on the verge of being rude to the customer. People kept flocking in. Wanting to buy more and more duct tape and sheets. "Can you believe it...We are all sold out. Sorry Home Depot was not able to accomodate your needs today." And laughed my ass home.
Stock tip of the day: 3M. Buy it today. What holds this country together? Not our system of democracy. Not our borders. Not the economy. Not our ideals. Not a vision for the future.
Duct tape.
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The suction economy. Max of MaxSpeak writes about "vanishing surpluses and false promises" from an economist's perspective at TomPaine.com.
Meanwhile, bankruptcies have risen over 25% during the (latest) Bush administration's first two years, according to this report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (pdf file via FindLaw).
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More than the space shuttle has disintegrated. Media Whores Online presents an emotionally moving protest report called Then and Now, chronicling the disintegration of international goodwill following 9/11/01 due to an increasingly belligerent US government. (1.7MB Flash show.)
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Speak Out
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land
And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers
Into the beginning of the Third World War
The war with the Third World
And the terrorists in Washington
Are shipping out the young men
To the killing fields again
And no one speaks
And they are rousting out
All the ones with turbans
And they are flushing out
All the strange immigrants
And they are shipping all the young men
To the killing fields again
And no one speaks
And when they come to round up
All the great writers and poets and painters
The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency
Will not speak
While all the young men
Will be killing all the young men
In the killing fields again
So now is the time for you to speak
All you lovers of liberty
All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness
All you lovers and sleepers
Deep in your private dream
Now is the time for you to speak
O silent majority
Before they come for you!
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is San Francisco's first poet laureate (1998) and the owner and founder of City Lights Bookstore. This poem first appeared on the City Lights Web site.
In contrast to the chickenhawks, Ferlinghetti served his country in the Navy during World War II.
Original link via the indispensable TalkLeft. Ferlinghetti read in Chicago in October 2002, an event we wrote about here.
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Faith-based weather forecast.Today, Presidents' Day — Snow, 24"
EXTENDED FORECAST
Tue 2/18 — Potomac turns to blood
Wed 2/19 — Frogs, 24"
Thu 2/20 — Lice
Fri 2/21 — West Nile flies
Sat 2/22 — Mad cow disease
Sun 2/23 — Smallpox
Mon 2/24 — Hailstorm
Tue 2/25 — Locusts
Wed 2/26 — Darkness
Thu 2/27 — Death
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Friday, February 14, 2003
The people of Baghdad are in New York City. "On February 13, 2003, teams of artists and activists began postering New York City with snapshots from Baghdad. Quiet and casual, the snapshots show a part of Baghdad we rarely see: the part with people in it."
These are the people W's administration is so hell-bent on bombing. See their faces at Baghdad Snapshot Action. Link via URLDJ.
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"Dow down 27% under Bush." That Clinton dollar you invested in your 401(k) or IRA is now worth a mere 73¢. More than a quarter of your retirement money has vanished into the fog spewn by Ari, Tom Ridge, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Homeland Sideshow.
We should be on Red Alert any minute now. Duct-tape your battery-operated radio to your head for further instructions.
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Project Steal, Project Plunder, Project Lie.... Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle provides a substantial overview of the 2,700-page congressional report dealing with the Enron collapse: Houston's bankrupt Enron Corp. aggressively pursued complex tax schemes of dubious legitimacy to improve its bottom line by $2 billion before collapsing in 2001, according to a critical new congressional report released Thursday.
The company that left many rank-and-file employees broke paid top executives lavishly, operated its tax division like a profit center and benefited from lax oversight inside and out, investigators said.
[…]
According to the committee investigation, the specially created entities had either flimsy or no true business purpose beyond securing favorable tax and accounting results for Enron.
One entity, noted by the committee for its punlike name, "Project Steele," delivered pretax earnings of $133 million for Enron's bottom line. Internal company documents for the transaction are titled, "Show Me the Money!"
[…]
In devising the transactions, Enron received tax advice that pushed legal boundaries from companies such as Bankers Trust, accounting firms Arthur Andersen and Deloitte & Touche, and from its outside law firm, Vinson & Elkins, the congressional panel said.
The work of outside advisers, which the investigators noted at times reached the level of "collusion," cost the bankrupt energy trader $88 million in fees.
Of Houston-based Vinson & Elkins in particular, the report notes that the "minimal level of review" provided by Enron's outside counsel was "perhaps not unintentional."
[…]
[Enron's former lead tax counsel, Robert J. ] Hermann said that between 1995 and 2001, the tax department booked close to $1 billion in profits [Ed.: !!!] for Enron. In 2000 alone, $296 million, or 30 percent of Enron's profits, came from tax-saving strategies.
"Through September of 2001, I was already putting $300 million on the bottom line for the company that year, but my boss asked if I could come up with another $300 million if I had to," Hermann said. "I said I could, but never got the chance to."
[…]
In 2000, the year before the company filed for bankruptcy, the 200 top Enron executives collected a combined $1.4 billion in salaries, bonuses and stocks.
At the same time, many other employees lost millions in retirements savings when the company failed, in part owing to a corporate culture that promoted investment in Enron stock.
The report notes that in addition to not pushing for diversification of investment, the company's retirement plan required Enron's matching contributions be invested back into Enron stock.
"Enron's 'core management philosophy' was rotten to the core," said Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., and a committee member.
 Enron was one of candidate Bush's most generous contributors at the gubernatorial and presidential levels. Enron's brazen financial frauds helped put an unelected candidate into the White House.
Remember when Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton shook hands and promised us campaign finance reform? The sorry state of our union is what we get for not badgering our representatives and insisting upon them coming through with a campaign finance system that did not reward candidates backed by money stolen from their employees, their shareholders, and the US Treasury.
Keeping track of these issues is the grunt work of democracy — and it is our responsibility.
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Speaking of liars, GOP media pawn Jerry Bowyer is new to our radar screen. His deceitful defense of Dubya's deficit is divulged by CalPundit, and TBOGG points to the fat cushion of Scaife foundation money upon which Bowyer's lying ass is seated.
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"You, sir, are a liar!" Emma of Late Night Thoughts posts good advice to candidates here and here. Such as:Moderates and liberals in this country believe that discussion will get them somewhere. It will not. The opposition does not speak; they spout, they preach, they revile, they attack. We spend a lot of time on the defensive: "but Bill Clinton didn't..."; "no, I didn't say that..."; "but that is not what happened..." By forcing us to defend ourselves, they make us repeat their lies until they are the only thing people hear. When did we forget the simple sentence: "you are lying?" Why do we have to be mealymouthed about it, and look for euphemisms? Why can't a Democratic politician look one of those blowhards on tv straight in the eye and say: you, sir, are a liar? Of course, countering every blowhard on television will require superhuman strength and endurance. Can we clone Carville? (Link via Blue Streak.)
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Recent film and video roundup. Ratings (and some reviews) from the highly idiosyncratic Skimble CineSystem™:8 : Amelie
9 : Far from Heaven
9 : The Fast Runner
6 : Gosford Park
4 : Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
7 : Nurse Betty
4 : Panic Room
9 : Talk to Her
8 : Y Tu Mamá También For recent movies, 9 is the highest possible score. The decade-based Skimble CineSystem™ is a 10-point scale, but to receive a rating of 10 a film must be at least ten years old and still be recognized as an indisputable masterpiece — e.g., Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and so on.
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Thursday, February 13, 2003
Two versions of the Party of Lincoln. George F. Will rhapsodizes about the "boldness" of the Bush budget (link via Zizka):President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget has little foreign policy content but, properly understood, has immense foreign policy implications. If Baghdad, Paris, Berlin, Brussels and Seoul understand this administration's comprehensive boldness, they will understand not only that regime change is coming to Iraq but also that the end of NATO as we have known it, and the removal of U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, are not unthinkable.
The budget evokes 1862. In that annus mirabilis, with the national government's writ severely restricted and the entire American project in doubt, Lincoln and Congress nevertheless enacted the Homestead Act, which sped the settlement of the Great Plains; the Morrill Act, which begot the land grant college system; and the law that ignited construction of the transcontinental railroad. This invocation of the ghost of Lincoln is used to qualify every plutocratic, destructive move by an ex-governor of Texas.
But Lincoln, as a congressman, voted against statehood for Texas.
Wouldn't it be a different country now if Lincoln had gotten his way?
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent," said Abraham Lincoln, representing the views of the real party of Lincoln. The current Republican administration concerns itself not at all with the consent of anyone but its obsequious minority, and maybe not even that.
A lot more than W's budget evokes 1862. The political climate in 2003 reeks of another civil war spurred by dividend-wielding corporate plantation owners stealing the wages of their worker-slaves.
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Educate Ann Coulter's fan club. Go to the Amazon page for Ann Coulter's newest hate crime in the shape of a book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, and enter your recommendation of Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? instead.
Here's what you do, in two easy steps:1. Go to the Amazon advice page for Treason and scroll down to "Our Customers' Advice."
2. Cut and paste What Liberal Media's ASIN (same as the ISBN) which is 0465001769 into the "I recommend:" box, and then check off whether you'd like your recommendation to be in addition to or instead of Coulter's screeching rants. (You'll have to have an Amazon ID to recommend a book.) Extra credit: Then go get (or give a right-wing colleague or relative) a copy of What Liberal Media? if you haven't already.
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Blood and sugar daddies. Don't miss Orcinus on wealth, who expands Dave Johnson's argument about academic repression to make an even scarier point:...it has long been apparent that the extremist right in America -- the neo-Nazis and skinheads, tax protesters and "Patriots," gay-bashers and anti-abortion radicals -- are being quietly funded by some very wealthy right-wing "sugar daddies." These people may not necessarily share all the views of these extremists, but they deliberately underwrite their causes as a way of creating "wedge issues" -- mostly racial and class issues that serve to keep the working class firmly entrenched in the conservative camp -- that help drag the national center rightward and start a million fires that keep liberals busy extinguishing them.
As with Johnson's 'Four Sisters' [the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors's Castle Rock Foundation and the Olin Foundation], their money grossly distorts the national body politic by exerting a strong gravitational pull rightward, and helps put a broad array of extreme agendas into play in the mainstream, when they might otherwise be relegated to the fringes. The real danger, as I've been discussing, is that the commingling of all these elements in an anti-liberal right -- especially one that is being whipped up with the kind of rhetoric that traditionally escalates into physically violent reaction -- may bring about a genuine coalition of corporatism and proto-fascism, all bent on destroying liberals. Upward wealth redistribution isn't enough for these folks. The Ann Coulters of the USA want the alienation, exile, humiliation, and death of any citizens who disagree with them. We haven't seen bloodthirsty, self-indulgent extremists like these since the promotional tour for Mein Kampf.
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Clear Channel prepares for war. Where do you land in the pecking order of interviewability for planned war coverage?INTERVIEW AND NEWS POSSIBILITIES:
Local and State Universities for a published guide of
'Spokespersons and Experts.'
Local Congressmen (know key committees involved)
Local Senators (same)
Terrorism experts
Chemical/Biological warfare experts
High ranking local military or ex-military officials
Military History professors
Former G-Men
Local Mosque spokesperson
Political Science professor
Government & Politics professor
International affairs experts and/or professor
Hazardous materials expert / Local Haz-Mat Director
Middle Eastern Studies professor
ROTC Instructor
Veterans of Desert Storm or the recent Afghanistan Conflict
Local families with loved ones currently in the Middle East
Local families of business types working in the Middle East
Local Companies with business ties to the Middle East (oil etc.)
Arab League Rep
Jewish Community Center Rep
Local airports and airlines
Military recruiting offices
Hotels ¡V stranded travelers?
National Guard/State Police (Are they on alert?)
Local emergency management officials or agencies
What about public access to Federal and State buildings?
Local schools ¡V business as usual?
Psychologists for effects on children
Is there a foreign consulate nearby (Israel has one in Houston)
Keep focused on the wires whatever for story angles occurring in CC markets
If a local TV station sends someone to the area find a way to use them, radio exclusive
Anti-war types That's me there, dead last. Link via Seeing the Forest.
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"The longest traditional Senate filibuster in history belongs to recently retired Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposition to civil rights legislation in 1957." (New York Times)
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 Mesmerizing the IRS. The Headline of the Day award goes to "Tax Moves by Enron Said to Mystify the I.R.S." (New York Times):Enron and other big companies have escaped taxes in recent years through financial maneuvers so complex that the Internal Revenue Service has been unable to understand them, the Senate Finance Committee will be told this morning by Congressional tax experts who spent nearly a year going over Enron's tax returns.
[...]
Enron, the Houston-based energy trading company, was one of the most politically connected businesses in the country, with ties to President Bush and many other federal officials. Its name became synonymous with corporate scandal when its stock price collapsed and it sought bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Enron's chief financial officer is awaiting trial on fraud and other charges.
The report's disclosures on corporate tax avoidance, and its details on executive compensation, "are eye-popping," said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee and one of only two people who would speak publicly yesterday about its contents. Molto misterioso! The scale of Enron's hypnotic powers boggles the mind:"The report paints quite a shocking picture of Enron's tax gimmicks and structured transactions and executive compensation," Mr. Baucus said. "Bad as Enron is going to come out, the deeper concern is this is just not Enron alone. It involves lots of other companies and how they inundated the I.R.S., out-complexed the I.R.S. The I.R.S. just cannot handle the complexity of some of these transactions."
Enron created 881 offshore subsidiaries, 692 of them in the Cayman Islands, as part of its strategy to avoid taxes.
The committee chairman, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the report "an absolute barn-burner."
At a confirmation hearing for new Tax Court judges yesterday, Senator Grassley said the report "provides for the first time the complete story of Enron's efforts to manipulate its taxes and accounting."
"The report is very disturbing in its findings," he added. "From this report, I'm worried about the Tax Court blessing highly artful interpretations of the code."
[...]
Enron did not pay taxes in four of the five years before its collapse, according to the financial statements it sent to shareholders. The company has hinted in the past that it may have actually paid some tax during those four years because of the corporate alternative minimum tax. If Enron did pay some alternative tax in those four years, it would raise fresh questions about the reliability of reports to shareholders and whether the Securities and Exchange Commission is adequately policing rules on the disclosure of material information about corporate finances. So far none of this is news, although it's worth repeating for a variety of reasons.
Tucked into the article was something a bit less unique to Enron and bit more shocking in its quantification:Tax shelters are sold primarily to the very biggest companies because they can pay the largest fees to the accounting and law firms and investment houses that design them and sell them on the condition of confidentiality. The I.R.S. has stepped up efforts to find tax shelters, but the agency lacks the resources to address the problem fully, Charles O. Rossotti, the former I.R.S. commissioner, warned last fall in his final report to his oversight board.
Corporate profits reported to the I.R.S. in 1998 were $155 billion less than those reported to shareholders, according to Mihir A. Desai, a Harvard economist. His study and others suggest that tax shelters may be the primary reason for this difference, which is costing the government as much as $54 billion in taxes each year.
The 10,000 or so largest companies paid 20.3 percent of their 1999 profits in federal income taxes, while the next tier of companies paid at a 30.9 percent rate, according to an I.R.S. analysis of corporate tax returns for the year. The largest companies had 26 times the profits of the second tier of companies, which paid income taxes at a rate 50 percent higher than the largest companies, the I.R.S. data shows. So much for double taxation of dividends. They apparently weren't even properly taxed the first time, if the cash was siphoned off to fund elaborate tax shelters.
The middle class of companies, like the middle class of citizens, is paying more than its share. The wealth redistribution schemes of this administration and the Republican Party are designe |
