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you're probably right about that... they just thought it was an eye sore.
exactly. I worked at a mortgage company years ago that got bought by GE Capital which is nortorious for doing that kind of thing. They merge us with another mortgage company in the midwest and proceeded to layoff people in our company who had 15, 20 years with our company and keep the ones in the midwest who were fresh out of college... gosh they saved a lot of money. Later I heard that the company doesn't exist any longer too....
might bother those who love sailing? some how I can imagine the uproar if they tried to do that anywhere near the bay area here...
I totally agree.
It reminds me of companies who buy out profitable healthy companies and strip them down to the bare bones and then dump them leaving them to wither and die
shame on Ted :)
there are some wind farms out here... but they located them out where they won't bother anyone
Why Democrats Don't Count
<< excellent lessons for Dems >>
Lessons from the Un-Gore of Mexico
July 14, 2006
By Greg Palast
[Watch "Florida con Salsa," Palast's 15-minute investigative report from Mexico City for Democracy Now!]
The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads.
And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome.
You've heard this story before: Gore 2000. Kerry 2004.
But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats."
For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes."
This past Saturday, my dream came true. Unfortunately, it was in Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get. There was Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling clique inside, "Count the votes!"
Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- vote by vote.
And you know what? I think they are going to have to listen. I suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant elite, may well have to count those votes. But, for that to happen, someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms.
Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats stand up when their elections are stolen?'
The answer: for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're invertebrates.
I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn funny). Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a devotion to democracy deep in the bone. Yet weirdly, candidates that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy.
Why? Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful. But the candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come from the privileged and pampered class. Votes are just the surfboards on which their ambitions ride.
Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied bundles uncounted. That's four times the "official" margin of victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador. Supposedly, they're "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable. But, not surprisingly, when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's.
If you think that's a Mexican game, think again. Because that's exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio.
In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for President. A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were cast by African-Americans. Did Black folk forget to vote for President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot? Not at all. Machines can't count some ballots. But people can. For example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot. The write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring out that voter's intent.
The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority attempted to choose Gore. And they would have been counted -- but Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt.
So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing their count. And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio.
But why fixate on Florida and Ohio? Here's a nasty little fact about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 presidential election that were never counted. In 2000, the uncounted ballots totaled just under two million.
And where were the Democrats? In 2004, behind the huge jump in uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots." They could have been counted, if someone had fought for it. Hundreds of lawyers were on stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told them to stand down.
Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was stolen. "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not now," said the beta dog. (I suspect that if Al Gore were found bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with "There may come a time when I speak on that...").
Lopez Obrador is of a different breed. At the rally last Saturday in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of fraud on a screen eighty feet tall. Imagine if Gore had projected the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen in front of the White House.
Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the capital. Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday. The result: the word among the political classes is that the election may be annulled. Even the conservative Financial Times has warned Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a full vote count.
North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it. The Republican Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it completely. The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them.
The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party gringos. Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the Democrats will count for nothing.
<< from an email >>
scary...
invading Iraq was a criminal act
is that what Kennedy is proposing? building a coal fired plant? or is he just wanting an alternative to the wind farm?
hard to believe there are still those who will try to argue that there were WMD... just unbelievable
how did you get to that when we were talking about Global Warming? what brought up Ted Kennedy??? sounds like a local issue that the locals should decide on, but frankly I don't know much about it and don't see how it relates to our original conversation...
feel free to give Ted your opinion yourself:
http://kennedy.senate.gov/issues_and_agenda/issue.cfm?id=1d19f52e-abff-476c-80b6-c5054b21aab5
and I do write my rep & senators regularly... here's what my senator has been doing about the environment:
http://boxer.senate.gov/issues/environment/
Too bad more people aren't like you. If they were we would not need strong leaders in government to tell us what we should or shouldn't do.
If they were like me, they would appreciate the opportunties they had for success and understand how important community is. They would have compassion for those less fortunate and want to extend a helping hand. They would understand how powerful it is when everyone works together for the benefit of the whole rather than letting a few powerful and greedy folks at the top take an obscene share of the spoils for themselves. And as for not wanting government telling us what to do and not do, they'd understand that it's the GOP that has it's nose in our bedrooms, in our medical decisions, etc.... not the Dems.
Those poor down trodding CEOs...
Are CEOs worth the price they are paid? You be the judge:
From 1936 to 1939 CEOs earned 82 times what the average worker made.
From 1940 to 1945 CEOs earned 66 times what the average worker made.
From 1945 to 1949 CEOs earned 49 times what the average worker made.
From 1950 to 1959 CEOs earned 47 times what the average worker made.
From 1960 to 1969 CEOs earned 39 times what the average worker made.
From 1970 to 1979 CEOS earned 40 times what the average worker made.
From 1980 to 1989 CEOs earned 69 times what the average worker made.
From 1990 to 1999 CEOs earned 187 times what the average worker made.
From 2000 to 2003 CEOs earned 367 times what the average worker made.
Data comes from a study called "Trends in CEO Compensation since 1936," by economists Carola Frydman of Harvard University and Raven Saks of the Federal Reserve Board. (If the *.pdf doesn't work, check out the Google html cache.)
I'm just sayin . . .
http://agonist.org/topic/economics_2
#msg-12006892
Leadership by example is the strongest kind... it's not about "telling people what to do". leadership is about communication, education and pulling people together for a common cause.
I run my own business and am very self motivated.
that's good news. I hope more follow.
those in leadership are set with the responsibility of "leading" the way... novel idea, huh.
Nice blast from the past :)
Pity the rich. It is conservative mantra.
...and the poor are all bums who deserve it
Yup....the nation's reacting to global warming.
yeah... and what is Bush admin doing? what is congress doing? what are you doing? how many are trying to undermine the cause by nit picking over the science details instead of addressing solutions?
that's the truth
so true :)
more like the heart line
as far as I'm concern, those who regularly post without links are being deliberately deceptive...
If you call wealth accumulation through thrift, good investing and acquired skills an "entitlement"...
you're hilarious... not. I have a problem with greed and corruption that funnels undue amounts of wealth to those who just happen to be in the upper elite particularly when it's done at the expense of the poor, elderly, children, etc.
do you see the irony in your post... laughing about how the gap will get bigger, the rich richer... and yet you have George Will's quote about entitlement mentality?
LOL... yeah, they have a warped sense of "success".
Rumsfeld should have been fired ages ago.
Another Mission ‘Accomplished’
<< in response to all that crap about a slightly lower deficit... just Bush admin grasping for straws... >>>
Yes, the report is expected to project that this year’s deficit will be somewhat less gargantuan than last year’s — probably somewhere between $280 billion and $300 billion, versus a $318 billion shortfall in 2005. That’s not much to crow about.
Published: July 11, 2006
The release of the White House midsession budget review is an annual event normally marked by a few wonkish observations and the routine updating of various spreadsheets, not by a full-dress presidential dog-and-pony show. But President Bush plans to preside today, with members of Congress and invited guests in attendance. By all indications, including his own in his weekly radio address last Saturday, he plans to turn this into a celebration — just in time for the fall campaign.
This is proof, if anyone still needs it, that this administration is desperate for something to boast about. On Mr. Bush’s watch, triple-digit budget surpluses have turned into annual triple-digit budget deficits. There’s no information in the midsession report to alter that utterly dispiriting fact. Yes, the report is expected to project that this year’s deficit will be somewhat less gargantuan than last year’s — probably somewhere between $280 billion and $300 billion, versus a $318 billion shortfall in 2005. That’s not much to crow about.
But Mr. Bush is likely to gloat, anyway. Earlier this year, the administration conveniently projected a highly inflated deficit of $423 billion. With that as a starting point, the actual results can be spun to look as if they’re worth cheering.
The razzle-dazzle won’t end there. As he did in his remarks on Saturday, Mr. Bush is sure to use today’s event to credit tax cuts for a projected “surge” in tax revenue. The Treasury is expected to take in about $250 billion more in 2006 than in 2005, for a total take of $2.4 trillion. Devoid of context, the number looks impressive.
In fact, it is $100 billion less than the $2.5 trillion revenue estimate the administration touted when it set out in 2001 to sell its policy of never-ending tax cuts. Even with this year’s bigger haul, real revenue growth during the Bush years will be abysmal, averaging about 0.3 percent per capita, versus an average of nearly 10 percent in all previous post-World War II business cycles. That might be excusable if the recent revenue improvements could reasonably be expected to continue. They cannot. Much of the increase in tax receipts is from corporate profits, high-income investors and super high-earning executives, sources that are just as unpredictable as the financial markets to which they’re inevitably linked.
So, the revenue surge is neither a sign that the tax cuts are working nor of sustainable economic growth. A growing number of economists, most prominently from the Congressional Budget Office, point out that upsurges in revenue are also the result of growing income inequality in the United States, an observation that is consistent with mounting evidence of a rapidly widening gap between the rich and everyone else. As corporations and high- income Americans claim ever more of the economic pie, revenues rise, even if there’s no increase in overall economic growth.
If Mr. Bush looked behind his headline numbers, he, too, could see that the rich are getting richer while the rest are, at best, only holding ground. It would make sense to use some of the windfall revenue to enact policies and programs that tilt against growing inequality. Unfortunately, he’s flogging more tax cuts that will deepen the divide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/opinion/11tues1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
too bad they didn't go after those responsible for the last preemptive attack on the US.
I wonder how "clean" the "clean coal" technology is???
auto industry is a good example...
what's really scary is that no one seems to see the big picture
corporate america is in trouble IMO because it rewards short term thinking and greed... executive compensation, especially bonuses, reward making this year the best ever with no regard for the future. they are selling out everyeones future so they can grab as much of the $$ as they can get today.
if it's a preemptive attack, we know exactly who to blame... Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, et al
many of us on iHub did... many people did... some were ignoring us then and therefore the selective memory
how was it?
...the emerging industrial giant is quietly becoming a world leader in developing renewable energy sources and technology
too bad the US is missing this opportunity
oops... need coffee :)
very strong letter... a clear attempt to cut the Senate Intelligence committe from the loop
yeah right... then why do you post her tripe?
well wait a minute! does it occur to anyone else that Hillary is being trashed because her husband cheated on her??? I haven't heard anything about her being unfaithful. There's something fundamentally wrong with that and it reeks of sexism IMO. argh!
and yes, many in the GOP are total hypocrits when it comes to "family values"