Paper ballots--why not?

All over the civilized world, people vote on paper ballots, which are then individually hand counted. Why don't we?

My hero, Debra Bowen, California's secretary of state, recently commissioned some computer experts to try to hack the voting machines in use in California. Guess what? They were able to hack every single computer!

This is a threat to our democracy. And it wouldn't be that way if voting machine interests didn't have such a cozy relationship with elected officials.

If the Germans can hand-count votes, why can't we?

Let's say 150 million ballots are cast in an election. (I think it's quite a bit less than that, but we'll use that number.) Counting a thousand votes would be an easy task, so if 150,000 people volunteered--or were paid--to count votes, we could get it done in an evening. Say we paid each person $40. The total would be $6 million, a pittance compared to what it's cost so far to turn our elections over to the computers of for-profit corporations with their own private agendas.

Or if we don't want to pay the $6 million to insure democracy, why not shut down a couple of government offices, like the motor vehicle department or the county general services department, on the day after the election and have them count the vote--with citizen oversight, of course?

All the problems with malfunctioning machines, hanging chads, butterfly ballots and election officials with hidden agendas would simply disappear. We could even have optically scannable ballots, so we can compare the scan with the hand count and make sure there is no error or shenanigans in either system.

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Where is the free market when we need it?

Brazil Issues Warning to U.S. Over WTO Cotton Ruling - New York Times:

"According to a report from aid and advocacy group Oxfam, eliminating all cotton subsidies in the United States -- which accounts for 40 percent of world exports -- would increase income for some African families by up to $114 a year, a 6 percent increase."

And who do you think is paying for those subsidies and how? You and me, sisters and brothers. With our taxes.

What does any of this have to do with free trade? I thought free trade was where everyone is on a level playing field and the business that can offer the best product at the lowest price wins.

But because we are paying money to agribusiness, they don't have to work hard to become the best. No matter how inefficient they might be, they still have the edge. They can flood poor countries with artificially cheap cotton, corn or other commodities that local farms cannot possibly compete with. Our tax dollars are going into the pockets of agribusiness and are being used unethically to destroy the livelihoods of people in poor countries.

Then when local economies are destroyed (such as Mexico's corn crop), we get vicious because starving Mexicans attempt to enter our country to become dishwashers and fruitpickers.

Where is our morality? Why is there no protest against this type of tax?

Furthermore, have you noticed that the taxes we get exercised about don't even apply to most of us? For instance the estate tax (called the "death tax" in our leaders' Orwellian newspeak) doesn't apply to you or me or Uncle Fred's farm. It applies to that 2% of our population whose estates are actually worth over a million dollars after the various deductions they get as mortgage holders or farmers.

There is a famous quote from Hermann Goering about going to war:

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

The domestic corollary to this is that the people can always be brought to the bidding of the corporations and fat cats. Just tell them there is a tax involved, and they will give up their right to participate fairly in our economy in order to prevent some rich guy from having to pay a tax that would ultimately benefit the rest of us. Somehow we fail to see that every subsidy for agribusiness, every tax cut for the wealthy, is a hidden tax on the rest of us.

Who's our friend: Iran or Saudi Arabia?

Swedish Meatballs Confidential: Unintended Consequence?

Which country should we threaten to attack?

Iran: supports the al-Maliki government in Iraq. Wants to see a stable Iraq on its borders.

That new narrative [that Iran is the enemy] threatens to obscure the bigger picture of Iranian policy toward Iraq, widely recognized by regional specialists. Iran's strategic interests in Iraq are far more compatible with those of the United States than those of the Sunni regimes in the region with which the US has aligned itself.

Contrary to the official narrative, Iranian support for Shi'ites is not aimed at destabilizing the country but does serve a rational Iranian desire to maximize its alliances with Iraqi Shi'ite factions, in the view of specialists on Iranian policy and on the security of the Persian Gulf region.

(Asia Times, courtesy of Swedish Meatballs, which also has, be warned, racy pictures for your prurient pleasure.)

Saudi Arabia: wants to see the al-Maliki government fall. Supports Sunni groups with cash and fighters (45 percent of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudi Arabian)

For more on the much larger role Saudis play in terrorist activities compared to Iran, see A Second Look at the Saudis. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the author's statements, but the links s/he cites are authentic.

Wake up, Americans

The current administration's definition of "executive privilege" is also the definition of dictatorship. It says that the president can do anything he wants and be protected from congressional oversight by claiming executive privilege.

2 Bush Aides Face Contempt Citations - New York Times:

"Brian A. Benczkowski, principal deputy assistant attorney general, cited the department's ''long-standing'' position, ''articulated during administrations of both parties, that the criminal contempt of Congress statute does not apply to the president or presidential subordinates who assert executive privilege.''"

How do you feel about Hillary Clinton having this kind of power?

(Although by the current definition, it might not be an issue, since Bush could simply cancel the next election and assert executive privilege for his reasons. I can just imagine Congress's reaction as they worry about whether protesting the cancellation will alienate voters.)

My crazy life

I'm tired. Really tired. Once again I've committed myself to help with causes instead of taking care of myself. It always seems like such a trivial commitment when I make it, and then it balloons into a soul-stealing obligation that hangs over my head while I put off one wretched chore after another in order to take care of some previous foolish obligation I've undertaken.

Is there a volunteers anonymous?

Yesterday we had 2 couples over for dinner. I don't often get my act together to entertain others in the usually hazardous environment of my household. It entails a full toxic waste cleanup and massive movement of piles of papers. But this effort is necessary from time to time and what better excuse than a dinner party?

Unfortunately, this time I was blindsided by an unexpected obligation the day before the dinner--the time I had set aside to do the cleanup--and so I did most of it, plus the menu for the dinner, on the actual day of the event. This was also the day that Steve did a gig with Will Williams in the town plaza, and I really wanted to see it. So I stole a half hour of time that I really didn't have, then ended up not really having time to clean up, prepare dinner and be calm and composed before the guests arrived. The papers hurriedly went into boxes in the bedroom, and await further action on my part or the possibility of succumbing to the temptation to just forget about them.

In the course of cleaning up I realized that the disorder in my house, and my life, had gotten really out of hand. I want to change this! For once in my life, I'd like to be neat, orderly and organized, even if for only a short time, so I can experience this phenomenon that is so natural for most people. I want to see tranquility and order when I look around my bedroom, my kitchen, my back yard, my garden, my front porch for chrissakes, where the remains of a solar cooking workshop still await the decision about where on earth to store them.

It seems like I've spent most of my life with the notion that once I get organized, life can begin. Can you imagine anything less Zen-like? I'm getting kind of long in the tooth for this approach.

I told Steve I wanted a vacation, but the fact is, it ain't no vacation if you just run away from your obligations and have to come back to them.

Speaking of Steve, he's perfectly happy to live in total chaos, and in his own house even migrated from his back bedroom to the front bedroom to his living room as the available space filled up with stuff. "Stuff" is like some kind of fungus, a slime mold that spreads to take over any environment it can get a foothold in. Like kudzu in the South.

He's in the process of doing it here, and I kind of put the brakes on the stuff that had spilled from his room into the living room when I cleaned up. That is, I put the stuff he'd distributed on the living room bookshelves and furniture into a box that I moved into the last available square foot of space in his room.

He was nice about it, but I know he wasn't too happy. I kind of have the right to set the boundaries in my own house, but the difference between is one of distressingly small degree. Maybe it would have been better if one of us was rigidly neat and could keep the other in line.

Oh, the dinner party? Everyone had a great time, despite the ill-prepared meal and the mess on the porch. Everyone was polite about the lukewarm chicken and the gazpacho that turned gray in the blender. There were enough musical instruments to keep all entertained after dinner. It only ended because one of them had to get up at 4 am to photograph a hot-air balloon event. This is Northern California after all.

Postscript: Steve has returned with chocolate ice cream brighten my outlook.

Just What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War

From the New York Times....

by Adam Cohen

July 23, 2007

[Excerpt]

Given how intent the president is on expanding his authority, it is startling to recall how the Constitution’s framers viewed presidential power. They were revolutionaries who detested kings, and their great concern when they established the United States was that they not accidentally create a kingdom. To guard against it, they sharply limited presidential authority, which Edmund Randolph, a Constitutional Convention delegate and the first attorney general, called “the foetus of monarchy.”

The founders were particularly wary of giving the president power over war. They were haunted by Europe’s history of conflicts started by self-aggrandizing kings. John Jay, the first chief justice of the United States, noted in Federalist No. 4 that “absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal.”

Many critics of the Iraq war are reluctant to suggest that President Bush went into it in anything but good faith. But James Madison, widely known as the father of the Constitution, might have been more skeptical. “In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed,” he warned. “It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.”

When they drafted the Constitution, Madison and his colleagues wrote their skepticism into the text. In Britain, the king had the authority to declare war, and raise and support armies, among other war powers. The framers expressly rejected this model and gave these powers not to the president, but to Congress.

The Constitution does make the president “commander in chief,” a title President Bush often invokes. But it does not have the sweeping meaning he suggests. The framers took it from the British military, which used it to denote the highest-ranking official in a theater of battle. Alexander Hamilton emphasized in Federalist No. 69 that the president would be “nothing more” than “first general and admiral,” responsible for “command and direction” of military forces.

The founders would have been astonished by President Bush’s assertion that Congress should simply write him blank checks for war. They gave Congress the power of the purse so it would have leverage to force the president to execute their laws properly. Madison described Congress’s control over spending as “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.”

The framers expected Congress to keep the president on an especially short leash on military matters. The Constitution authorizes Congress to appropriate money for an army, but prohibits appropriations for longer than two years. Hamilton explained that the limitation prevented Congress from vesting “in the executive department permanent funds for the support of an army, if they were even incautious enough to be willing to repose in it so improper a confidence.”

As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully created.

The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.

Read the whole thing...

Drawing of King George III courtesy of Clipart ETC, a great site for high-quality educational clipart.

Contempt for the democratic process

Even Nixon didn't try this...

By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON
July 21, 2007
New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 20 — The Justice Department would be likely to block any efforts by Congressional Democrats to seek contempt charges against present and former White House officials for refusing to give information to Congress, a White House spokesman said Friday.

Congress and the White House have been moving toward a constitutional confrontation over the administration’s invoking executive privilege to prevent any testimony about its role in last year’s dismissal of federal prosecutors.

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Congressional threats to have presidential aides charged with criminal contempt would probably end in failure. “It has been the Justice Department’s long-held view that the law does not permit Congress to require a U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury or otherwise pursue a prosecution” when someone refuses on the basis of executive privilege to testify or turn over documents, Mr. Fratto said.

The administration’s warning that contempt citations would fail is the latest salvo in an escalating legal clash between the White House and Congress and appears intended to discourage Democrats in Congress from pursuing the charges against White House officials.

The administration sought on Friday to tamp down suggestions that a crisis was looming. “Obviously there are a number of steps that would have to occur before we reached a juncture where such a legal position could be considered,” said a senior Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk about legal strategy in this case.

Mr. Fratto said he hoped the issue could still be resolved by accommodation. “We still don’t believe it needs to come to this,” he said, repeating the White House’s offer to allow aides to meet informally with lawmakers and to allow Congressional investigators to review White House documents in private.

Democrats have rejected the offer. They have dropped demands that presidential aides provide sworn testimony in public, but they have insisted on transcribing the interviews and they want wider access to documents than the White House has been willing to give.

The assertion that the Justice Department could thwart a contempt effort underscored a larger White House strategy to stake out a tough stance in its face-off with Congress, but one that could be modified later. Most confrontations over the refusal by presidents or their aides to provide information to Congress have ended with some sort of compromise.

A Democratic staff aide in Congress called the White House comments “a trial balloon,” which was supported by the fact that they first came Thursday evening from an unnamed official whose remarks were reported Friday in The Washington Post.

A former United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Joseph E. diGenova, said that by suggesting that any contempt efforts would be blocked by the Justice Department, the administration was “making it clear that this is not going to be an easy road for Congress to go and the president will use all his powers to make it difficult for them.”

Administration officials have cited a 1984 internal legal memorandum written by the Justice Department when Congress sought to charge a Reagan administration official with contempt. The memorandum concluded that a United States attorney was not required to bring a contempt charge if requested to do so by Congress. In addition, the memorandum said that contempt of Congress would not apply to an executive branch official “who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said any effort by the White House to block the federal prosecutor from bringing a contempt citation on behalf of Congress would demonstrate the very problem Congress was seeking to investigate: whether federal prosecutors have been subjected to political influence.

“This administration has consistently chosen to stonewall Congressional oversight attempts, and this latest decision to interfere with those checks and balances is deeply disturbing,” Mr. Leahy said.

Underlying the discussion is the awkward procedure Congress would normally use to hold someone in contempt. Under most circumstances, Congress would have to ask the federal prosecutor in Washington to convene a grand jury and consider indicting on contempt charges any official who refused to respond to Congress’s requests for information or testimony. But the officials who have refused to cooperate — Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Joshua B. Bolten, Mr. Bush’s chief of staff — have declined to do so because the White House has invoked executive privilege.

In addition, Sara M. Taylor, a former White House political director, refused to answer several questions when she appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, also citing executive privilege.

Congress has another route to enforce its will, an inherent power of contempt. But that has not been used since early in the 20th century. It has long been deemed unwieldy in the modern era as it entails Congress stopping all work to hold its own trial and imprisoning any offenders in the basement of the Capitol.

Paul Craig Roberts: Impeach Now

Paul Craig Roberts: Impeach Now:

"Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of 'executive orders' that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, 'terrorist' events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran." More...

Paul Craig Roberts is not some leftie radical. He's a solid conservative, architect of "Reaganomics," and fellow of conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institute.

Hear his blistering critique of the Bush administration on Thom Hartmann, July 19.

I've been generally opposed to pushing for impeachment, given that Democrats don't have the numbers to do it, but I'm beginning to come round, thanks to Roberts and fellow conservative Bruce Fein, who has also called for impeachment.

Iraqis don't need us ---Maliki

Iraqis ready to manage own security: PM - World - smh.com.au:

Mr Maliki admitted on Saturday that he wanted his army and police to have more US-backed training, but he insisted Iraqi forces could deal adequately with an abrupt American pullout. "We say with confidence that we are capable, God willing, of taking full responsibility for the security file if the international forces withdraw in any time they wish."

So what's the holdup? Let's get out! Republicans want to filibuster? I say let 'em!

Filibuster? Why, only Republicans are allowed to do that.

GOP demonstrates its sincerity about supporting the troops.

Remember back in 2005, when Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats threatened to filibuster against one of Bush's shameful federal judge candidates?

Oh, no, said the Republicans. That's obstructionist and we won't stand for it. We'll invoke the nuclear option and get rid of the right to filibuster judicial nominees. Scared of the possibility, the Democrats politely backed down and promised not to filibuster in exchange for vague promises from the Republicans, who went on to get get Bush's constitution-busting nominees appointed to the Supreme Court.

Remember, the rule is that it takes 60 votes to end debate on legislation and allow a vote, as long as debate is still going on. That's where the filibuster comes in. Jimmy Stewart used it to prevent passage of a bad bill in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Southern Democrats (who later mostly became Republicans) used it during the fifties to oppose civil rights legislation (as in the attached photo of Strom Thurmond with reading material during his record-breaking 1957 filibuster). And Republicans used it in 1968 to block LBJ's nomination of Abe Fortas to the Supreme Court.

Well, today the Republicans decided it was all right to filibuster--now that the Democrats are back in control. (Filibusters reached an all-time high during the 1991-1992 session, also when Democrats were in control.) It seems that the filibuster is a legitimate Republican tactic, but not kosher for Democrats.

Today, 54 Senators--including seven Republicans, God bless 'em--supported an amendment to the Defense Policy Bill that would require soldiers to be granted home leaves between deployments, the leave being at least as long as the deployment. That is, if you were deployed for a year, you get a year off, for instance.

The amendment addresses the terrible stresses the troops face in having one deployment after another with no leave or an indeterminate amount of leave between deployments. This hurts morale among the soldiers and their families and makes it difficult for soldiers to get on with their lives and work between deployments. It exacerbates the PTSD that all soldiers suffer from to a degree.

Nevertheless, the rest of the Republicans decided to put the soldiers' needs on the back burner by filibustering the amendment.

Remind me again, which party is the one that supports the troops?

Incidentally, you won't find this information on today's so-called liberal hotbed, the New York Times. However, the filibuster was the top story on the Washington Post's Web site today, to their credit.

Cut out the middleman! Elect a lobbyist for president!

Lobbyists now run our government. Why not just eliminate the middle man and put a lobbyist in the oval office? Especially one that will support anything for a buck, including abortion rights.














Lobbyist, Washington "outsider"
and "Chick Magnet" Fred Thompson

What to do for dinner when it's 101 degrees out?

How about a sizzling pot of baked beans from the solar oven? No charcoal, no air pollution, no heating up the house.

Yesterday I baked solar bread.

Tomorrow I'll be conducting a workshop on making this solar oven out of cardboard, aluminum foil and glass. You can make one too. Here's where you can find the plans for the SunStar cooker, thanks to Joe Radabaugh, whose book, Heaven's Flame, also contains the plans and much more information about solar cooking.


Here's a full view of the cooker posing in my weed garden.

The materials cost about $10, mostly for the glass, aluminum foil, glue and other odds and ends. Since we wanted the materials in the workshop to be uniform, we also ordered 25 sets of boxes in the same sizes, instead of scrounging boxes of various sizes and having to adapt the design to them. But you don't have to do that.

More after the workshop.

Energy efficiency vs. liquefied coal: Which do you think Congress is subsidizing?

Energy efficiency vs. liquefied coal: Which do you think Congress is subsidizing? | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

This is from a May 29 article that I'm just getting around to posting. Clearly, the big push for liquified coal will vastly increase greenhouse gas emissions. Here's an excerpt:

So: an enormous expense, for miniscule energy security benefits and no carbon reductions. Sounds great, eh?

It sounds great to policymakers, though:

... the scale of proposed subsidies for coal could exceed those for any alternative fuel, including corn-based ethanol.

Among the proposed inducements winding through House and Senate committees: loan guarantees for six to 10 major coal-to-liquid plants, each likely to cost at least $3 billion; a tax credit of 51 cents for every gallon of coal-based fuel sold through 2020; automatic subsidies if oil prices drop below $40 a barrel; and permission for the Air Force to sign 25-year contracts for almost a billion gallons a year of coal-based jet fuel.

Why on earth would Congress do something so criminally stupid, so manifestly against the public interest? Why do they ever?

Coal industry lobbying has reached a fever pitch. The industry spent $6 million on federal lobbying in 2005 and 2006, three times what it spent each year from 2000 through 2004, according to calculations by Politicalmoneyline.com.

There's your civics lesson from today's NYT, kids:

• Energy efficiency: a financial boon and a cheap, fast way to reduce carbon emissions. But: no big industry lobby. Thus: ignored by the feds.
• CTL: a financial boondoggle with few energy security benefits that will aggravate climate change. But: big industry lobby. Thus: plied with billions in taxpayer subsidies.

Looking for something to chat about with your Congressional representative? This seems like a good place to start.

The funny thing is, by making a few painless changes in our daily lives--like replacing our light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, or driving cars that are more appropriate for the one or two passengers they usually contain--we could save so much energy we wouldn't need to liquify coal.

Graphic is from the New York Times.