frankilin roosevelt

It's not about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.


Check out my old  Voice of the People page.


Gino Napoli
San Francisco, California
High School Math Teacher

jonsdarc@mindspring.com




Loyalty without truth
is a trail to tyranny.

a middle-aged
George Washington



ARCHIVES
1662 POSTS
LATEST ITEM

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
May 2022
April 2022
February 2022
January 2022
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
September 2016
August 2016
May 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
September 2014
August 2014
May 2014
March 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
August 2012
July 2012
April 2012
March 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
August 2010
July 2010
March 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
August 2009
July 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
June 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
June 2005
May 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004

Tuesday, 7 June 2005 at 2h 12m 33s

What did Bolton say?

This is from Thinkprogress [LINK]

Revelations about John Bolton’s unlawful orchestration of the firing of Jose Bustani, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, are not entirely new. In fact, the firing of Bustani caught the attention of many individuals who had become wary that the Bush administration was intent on military action against Iraq. In an April 16, 2002, column published by the British newspaper the Guardian, George Monbiot asserted:

On Monday, the U.S. government forced the departure of Jose Bustani, director- general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.… These recent attempts to undermine international treaties are being pursued with an eye to the impending war with Iraq.… The U.S. justification for war is that Saddam Hussein may possess weapons of mass destruction. So the two foremost obstacles to war were Blix and Bustani, who have proposed nonviolent methods of getting rid of these weapons.

The ousting of Bustani was typical of the smoke and mirror games that the administration played during the run-up to the Iraq war: present a false claim and push ahead before anyone can ask questions. One of the principal justifications for getting rid of Bustani was that the organization had hit financial problems under his reign. However, according to Bustani, “the organization had hit financial problems because its three biggest funders – the US, Germany, and Japan – failed to make their payments on time.” [Press Association, 5/14/02]

As if the treatment of Bustani wasn’t enough, the further emasculation of the entire Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was equally as shameful. According to the 7/1/02 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

The U.S. ambassador to the OPCW told the staff it would be difficult to find a replacement for Bustani, because no one wants ‘to be associated with a dying organization.’ After remarking that the United States also wanted no more Latin American directors because of their ‘sheer incompetence,’ the ambassador then added, ‘If any of this gets out of this room, I’ll kill the person responsible.’”



Yep, that's what he said alright.

They knew what they were doing. They've been planning this for a long time.


Tuesday, 7 June 2005 at 0h 33m 53s

The strain of a paranoid neurotic

Please get me the names of the Jews. You know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. Could we please investigate some of those c---suckers?
--Richard. M. Nixon, from the Nixon Tapes.


Tuesday, 7 June 2005 at 0h 8m 43s

It does happen here

This is a story from the New York Times [LINK] written by Steven Greenhouse. It was brought to my attention by Nathan Newman's blog.

For many workers in Bushwick, Brooklyn, the possibility of receiving the legally required time and a half for overtime, even when they work 80-hour weeks, seems as likely as winning the lottery.

"They always told us work faster, faster, and the money was really bad," said Deisi Cortes, who worked as a stocker at Super Star 99 until April when she was fired, she said, for being pregnant. "We'd ask for a raise, and all they'd say is, 'Maybe later on.' " 'It's pretty stunning the extent to which stores here break wage and hour laws," said Deborah Axt, a lawyer with Make the Road by Walking, an immigrant advocacy group in Bushwick. "The violations seem epidemic."



Why should this be a surprise? Farm laborers have been experiencing wage manipulation for at least as long as sharecropping. Sharecroppers got the right to work a plot of the landowner for a small portion of the revenue, only to fall into debt by the need to borrow before the sale of the harvest. Illegal immigrant laborers were often allowed to work the fields, only to be turned in when the 6 week labor was over and it was time for the employer to pay -- sometimes with a financial kickback to local legal authorities. Racism no doubt justified(-ies) this greed.

Have you ever noticed that hate and selfishness have to have a scapegoat and an excuse, whereas love and consideration need no justification at all.

For those with little to no experience or education, the vulnerability in the labor market is very real. Intimidation is a constant factor, as common as overbearing and mind-game playing mid-level managers, where the employee is essential interchangeable with someone else who can do the same job.

And in a large market with plenty looking for work, there's no reason for any employer to keep on an employee at higher cost unless experience matters, or the employer is an individual who values devotion more than profit.


Sunday, 5 June 2005 at 21h 34m 35s

Tax rates and super wealth

The new york times had a story today [LINK] by David Kay Johnston -- one of my favorite journalists. The story: the tax rate for the super wealthy is signifigantly less than the moderately wealthy.

Specifically, the effective tax rate for those who make $100,000 to $10 million is a higher portion of their income than those who earn more than 10 million.

Those who earn $50,000 to $75,000 pay 17.4% of their income. The top 400 tax payers pay 17.5% of their income.

Here is a helpful graphic.


Interestingly enough, the top tax rate during the 1950s was 90% for all income over 1 million. If you made 10 million dollars, the first 1 million was taxed at the lower rate. The remaining 9 million dollars was taxed at 90% -- 8.1 million.

Extreme wealth does not necessarily get invested in ways that are beneficial to the nation and the national well-being. This money goes abroad, gets uselessly wasted on conspicuous consumption, or gets spent aggregating more revenue sources -- not necessarily of benefit to the consumer or nation. Using economic resources to accrue monopolistic control or external profit sources (outside the U.S. -- like Walmart inporting Chinese manufactured goods) is usually not in the long-term interest of the nation, although a small assortment of wealthy individuals might make a lot of money.

Thus, the whole point of the extra taxation of extreme wealth ensures that this money is invested in ways that are beneficial to the nation. In the 1950s, that surplus tax money was invested in education and the interstate highway system.

The assumption of noblesse oblige by the wealthy is not credible. Donations to charity and non-profits are not equivalent because they are too narrow and diffused to have the desired effect. The history of the last 100 years shows this to be true.

The problem is not taxation. The problem is unfair taxation and wasteful spending by the government. There are a plethora of potent government investments. Such as ....

  1.) Reduced class size for all classes to 20 students per teacher, thereby employing more teachers, and increasing the ability of each teacher to reach each student more effectively.

  2.) subsidizing College tuition expenses based upon income instead of student loans, or at least very low (2 percent) interest-rate loans

  3.) Metro rail systems for urban areas of more than a million, reduces traffic congestion, and energy consumption

  4.) investment in solar energy and wind stations across the country.

  5.) pension fund for all workers high and low, instead of burdening business with the costs of providing pensions. No exceptions

  6.) Month long paid vacations for all workers, thereby increasing the number of possible employed.

  7.) Government subsidized minimum wage and cost-of-living supports for all workers who are at the bottom. That way business is not the first front for maintaining a living wage for all workers.

  8.) One single insurance plan for all citizens, and a central regulations board which oversees all state regulations boards for doctors and hospitals. Multiple insurance companies are the main source of cost overrun.



Would this be infinitely better than a presumption that our super-wealthy individuals will invest in these large-scale benefits to society?

Discussion of what is in the national interest has been captured by multi- national corporations, which are only the legal forms of the super-wealthy. Not that this is entirely bad. Philosophical perspectives are not a function of wealth or lack thereof. Enlightened ideas are not lacking from those with large financial resources. However, only through diversity has the resemblance of democracy and freedom been maintained. With each decrease in this diversity, and with each concomitant increase in concentration of economic power into smaller hands, the resemblance to democracy and freedom diminishes accordingly.


Sunday, 5 June 2005 at 19h 47m 18s

In case you missed it ... Ohio coingate is really smelly.

This is from Americablog who discusses and article from the newspaper Toledo Blade. A link for the story is provided below.

The Headline:

"Noe fallout taints early candidates to succeed Taft; Democrats take aim at GOP trio"

The main article in the Toledo Blade [LINK] gives the overview of the scandal and how the GOP leaders are involved.

Here is a portion of the Blade article.

------

Tom Noe has outraged and angered the governor of Ohio, caused the President to return his campaign contributions, and his $50 million state-coin funds are in disarray.

But the Maumee coin dealer's biggest political victims might be Attorney General Jim Petro, Auditor Betty Montgomery, and Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell - who are competing to become Ohio's next governor.

The three Republican officeholders running for governor have all received campaign cash from Mr. Noe and have been criticized for their slow reaction to the growing coin scandal.

Now they find themselves on the defensive, quickly distancing themselves from the prominent Republican campaign fund-raiser, who is facing multiple investigations, including a probe into whether Mr. Noe violated campaign- finance laws by laundering money into the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. All of the candidates say they have known Mr. Noe for years and they returned thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from him and his wife, Bernadette, last week.

That piece alone was a good read...but it gets better. In separate articles, The Blade examines each of the three GOP candidates for Governor (Blackwell, Montgomery and Petro) and their relationship to Noe and the scandal.

Secretary of State Ken Blackwell

Blackwell had few concerns at first:

In fact, Mr. Blackwell told The Blade on April 5 that "most people" wouldn't find it "unreasonable" that the state had invested in rare coins with Tom Noe, who has said through his attorneys that at least $10 million of the state's assets are missing.

"When you run a fund the size of $18 billion and you're looking at $50 million, beyond what one's disposition might be, is that an irresponsible amount of risk? Most people would say no," Mr. Blackwell said on April 5 - two days after The Blade's initial report on the coin investment.

State Auditor Betty Montgomery

Montgomery insists she didn't delay action on audit: it took 43 days after The Blade's first story for Ms. Montgomery to announce that her office would do a special audit of the rare-coin investment.

Democrats have charged that Ms. Montgomery, a former Wood County prosecutor and state senator, didn't act sooner because she has known Mr. Noe for several years and has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from him and his wife, Bernadette. She relinquished $8,150 in contributions last week.

Attorney General Jim Petro

Petro saw no 'sense of illegality' at first in coin scandal: Attorney General Jim Petro waited more than a month to begin taking legal action after learning that two state-owned coins worth $300,000 were reportedly stolen from the suburban Denver office of Tom Noe's rare-coin venture with the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

But Mr. Petro, who first read about the bureau's $50 million investment with Mr. Noe in The Blade on April 3, is adamant he took appropriate measures to protect the bureau's assets as soon as there were questions of wrongdoing.

"The first story simply said he was an influential guy in the Republican Party and he had a contract with BWC," Mr. Petro told The Blade last week. "I might have looked at it that it's not the world's greatest investment from my perspective, but that's not a cause of action."

A "breach" of contract, "possible misappropriation," or "misdeed" - would be necessary to begin legal proceedings, but there "was not any sense of illegality at that point," he said.

------

What a great way to spend a Sunday...reading about squirming, nasty Ohio Republicans wrapped up in the biggest scandal to hit that state in decades. And, they are all involved.




Saturday, 4 June 2005 at 20h 27m 44s

I couldn't have said it better myself

"We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You even think like the tube. In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion."
--Howard Beale


Friday, 3 June 2005 at 20h 38m 4s

What did he say?

"In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
--George Bush

"Effective propaganda must limit its points of a few and these points must be repeated until the audience understands what is meant by them."
--Joseph Goebbels


Friday, 3 June 2005 at 20h 33m 43s

Remember Pat Tillman

They will even lie about those who consider themselves patriotic. The spin must not reveal the ugly truth.


From the NewYork Times [LINK]

Pat Tillman, for example, was a popular N.F.L. player who, in a burst of patriotism after Sept. 11, gave up a $3.6 million contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army Rangers. He was sent first to Iraq, and then to Afghanistan, where he was shot to death by members of his own unit who mistook him for the enemy.

Instead of disclosing that Corporal Tillman had died tragically in a friendly fire incident, the Army spun a phony tale of heroism for his family and the nation. According to the Army, Corporal Tillman had been killed by enemy fire as he stormed a hill. Soldiers who knew the truth were ordered to keep quiet about the matter. Corporal Tillman's family was not told how he really died until after a nationally televised memorial service that recruiters viewed as a public relations bonanza.

Mary Tillman, Corporal Tillman's mother, told The Washington Post:

"The military let him down. The administration let him down. It was a sign of disrespect. The fact that he was the ultimate team player and he watched his own men kill him is absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. The fact that they lied about it afterward is disgusting."



If the administration treats our patriots this way, how can we trust them on anything?


Friday, 20 May 2005 at 3h 44m 7s

No way, not us, we are innocent


Friday, 20 May 2005 at 3h 24m 23s

Lost

Thanks to bartcop and E Boyd

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're 30 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude." She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, then you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met but, somehow, now it's my fault."




GOTO THE NEXT 10 COLUMNS