Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Uncategorized

If you need more context, read my post from earlier this afternoon.

As downloaded from the PDF on his website–scroll down to “Documents and Links.” The numbers at ends of paragraphs refer to footnotes in the original document:

Since 2001, Vice President Cheney has made repeated efforts to shield the activities of his office from public scrutiny. These efforts include exempting his office from the presidential executive order governing the protection of classified information, challenging the right of the Government Accountability Office to examine the activities of the Vice President’s energy task force, and refusing to disclose basic facts about the operations of his office, such as the identity of the staff working in his office and the individuals who visit the Vice President’s residence.

Exempting the Office of the Vice President from the Executive Order on Classified National Security Information. Over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from Executive Order 12958, which establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified information. In response to the protests of the National Archives, the staff of the Vice President proposed abolishing the office within the Archives that is in charge of implementing the executive order.1

Blocking GAO Oversight. In 2001, Vice President Cheney headed a task force to develop a national energy policy. After GAO sought to learn the identity of the energy industry officials with whom the Vice President’s task force met, Vice President Cheney sued the Comptroller General to prevent GAO from conducting oversight of his office.2

Concealing Privately-Funded Travel. Vice President Cheney has refused to comply with an executive branch ethics law requiring him and his employees to disclose travel paid for by special interests.3

Withholding Information about Vice Presidential Staff. Every four years, Congress prints the “Plum Book,” listing the names and titles of all federal political appointees. In 2004, the Office of the Vice President, for the first time, refused to provide any information for inclusion in the book.4

Concealing Information about Visitors to the Vice President’s Residence. The Vice President has asserted “exclusive control” over any documents created by the United States Secret Service regarding visitors to the Vice President’s residence.5 This has the effect of preventing information about who is meeting with the Vice President from being disclosed to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

Allowing Former Vice Presidents to Assert Privilege Over Documents. An Executive Order issued by President Bush in November 2001 provided the Vice President with the authority to conceal his activities long after he leaves office. Executive Order 13233 took the unprecedented step of authorizing former Vice Presidents to assert privilege over their own vice presidential records, preventing them from being released publicly.6

Had enough? Click below to cast your vote in the national Cheney Impeachment Poll.

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By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, Uncategorized

Item: Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, notes that Vice President Cheney has been claiming an exemption for his office from the rules governing handling of classified information. Hmmm, didn’t Scooter Libby of the Veep’s office get sent to jail for just such a security breach? Perhaps that’s what Waxman means when he writes, “I question both the legality and wisdom of your actions. … [I]t would appear particularly irresponsible to give an office with your history of security breaches an exemption from the safeguards that apply to all other executive branch officials.”

(This is one of several charges against Cheney by Waxman. Click here for the full list.)

Item: Bush nominated John Rizzo as the CIA’s General Counsel–yes, the same Rizzo who wrote to Gonzales that U.S. laws prohibiting torture “makes plain that it only prohibits extreme acts.”

Item: Yes, they’re finally talking about closing that disgrace and embarrassment of a torture center at Guantanamo…but opening up a new one in Afghanistan, no doubt so they can once again argue that U.S. law doesn’t apply.

Item: the U.S. is openly discussing, and has for six months, having U.S. military special operations forces working on American soil. I don’t know about you, but that makes me very nervous. Do we learn nothing from studying Hitler’s early years in power? Read Naomi Wolf’s “The End of America,” published by Chelsea Green. (I have sent an article about her to my webmaster for posting, but it hasn’t appeared yet.

Item: Cheney’s KBR (subsidiary of Halliburton) just got another fat military contract, shared with three other companies and totaling half a billion dollars. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

All of these were brought to my attention in just a single news bulletin from Citizens for Legitimate Government, which sends out several such bulletins every day. They follow the news closely and link to the original, mostly mainstream media, sources–as I have done here. Subscription costs nothing. Be informed, or be sorry later. (Standard disclaimers: my only connection is as a fairly recent subscriber.)

And why are the Democrats still funding the war? And why aren’t they talking about impeachment?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Peace and War, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

About ten years ago, a local PR agency decided to subcontract some overload copywriting projects. She asked me if I wanted to try out wrking together. The first assignment she gave me was for a manufacturer of luggage–sounds innocuous enough, right? This was a local company, and I knew that they had a number of DOD contracts to make cases for weapons.

Well, when she sent me their sell sheets, they were so jingoistic and pro-war that they made me sick to even look at them.

I knew the PR agent was overwhelmed and didn’t want to mess her up (especially on the first project)–but after an hour of thinking about it, I realized there was no way I could work on this account–it was too at odds with my values.

So I very apologetically called the PR agency and told her I’d be glad to help her out, but not on this account, and sorry to strand her.

She immediately gave me a different account. I’ve never been sorry I turned that first one down.

OTOH, about a decade earlier, I did some work for Smith & Wesson involving sales materials for their police training program. The material was not rah rah, shooting is good–but emphasized the need for cops to be well-trained before being unleashed on the streets with lethal weapons. I decided that well-trained cops was an agenda I could support, at least to the point of doing this assignment.

In Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, I go on at some length about when to say no to a sale. Discomfort with the politics of the client is a legitimate reason. At the same time, you don’t want to suddenly walk away from a big chunk of your income.

And this works two ways. Although I disagree with the position of making gay marriage illegal, I respect the right of a right-wing fundamentalist to say no to an account promoting gay marriage, for instance. It’s not congruent with their values. (Something I blogged about this idea a year ago, in fact.) I hope we and other activists can eventually change those values–a very hard thing to do and a whole other discussion.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Uncategorized

Progressive Democrats of America recently sent this e-mail quoting the Republican platform of 2000. It doesn’t take much to see that the Bush government has exponentially expanded every one of the claimed Clinton-era abuses, and added several of its own. Ahh, what might have been!

In 2000, Team Bush took over the Republican Party and laid out its promises to the American people. The following pledges and claims are taken directly from the 2000 GOP Platform. Should we laugh or cry at promises made by an administration that has ruled through deception, endless war, politicization of intelligence and the Justice Dept., outing CIA officers, and the like? SHARE THIS WITH FRIENDS.

Honest Government
“Trust, pride, and respect: we pledge to restore these qualities to the way Americans view their government.”

Keeping Intelligence Free of Politics
“Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments. A Republican administration working with the Congress will respect the needs and quiet sacrifices of these public servants as it strengthens America’s intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities”

Diplomacy and Maintaining Allies
“The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the [Clinton] administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.”

Endless Military Missions, Exit Strategies and Troop Readiness
“The current administration has casually sent American armed forces on dozens of missions without clear goals, realizable objectives, favorable rules of engagement, or defined exit strategies.” [Emphasis added.]

“Sending our military on vague, aimless, and endless missions rapidly saps morale. Even the highest morale is eventually undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment, inadequate training, and rapidly declining readiness. When it comes to military health, the administration is not providing an adequate military health care system.”

Restoring the Rule of Law and the Justice Department
The rule of law, the very foundation for a free society, has been under assault, not only by criminals from the ground up, but also from the top down. An administration that lives by evasion, coverup, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of Justice. The credibility of those who now manage the nation’s top law enforcement agency is tragically eroded. We are fortunate to have its dedicated career workforce, especially its criminal prosecutors, who have faced the unprecedented politicization of decisions regarding both personnel and investigations.”

Gas Prices (then $1.55 per gallon)

“Today, gas prices have skyrocketed, and oil imports are at all-time highs….By any reasonable standard, the Department of Energy has utterly failed in its mission to safeguard America’s energy security. “

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized

One of my consistent favorite sources for stories everyone should know about but which get little or no play in the mainstream US media is a skinny little print newsletter called The Washington Spectator. Just four pages per issue, but tremendous content. It’s also available online.

The current issue features a horror story of some Connecticut librarians who received one of the dreaded “national security letters”–FBI fishing expeditions with no safeguards, and severe penalties if the recipients make these letters known. But these folks fought back, got the ACLU involved, and eventually–no thanks to the courts, not even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who turned down the request. In this situation, the FBI itself lifted its own gag order for reasons not made clear in the article.

I actually did know about this awful law, and I remember when librarians banded together to fight it, and were assured by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft that it wasn’t going to be used against librarians.

Well, that isn’t exactly how it turned out.

While two FBI agents waited in Christian’s office, he read a paragraph of his national security letter, which cited a statute and certified that the information the agent requested was “relevant to an authorized investigation against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, and that such an investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

Christian had never heard of a national security letter. By his calendar the date was July 8; the letter was dated May 19. Almost a week had passed since the FBI had called his office. “This didn’t look like the FBI was in hot pursuit of anyone,” Christian said. The letter wasn’t addressed to him, but to the employee the FBI initially contacted. Its third paragraph prohibited the recipient from “disclosing to any person that the FBI has sought or obtained access or information to records under these provisions.”

“I told the agent I didn’t think the statute was constitutional,” he said. “And that I was going to discuss it with my attorney.”

Every freedom-loving American ought to be deeply concerned about the potential for abuses of power under this little-known provision of the Patriot Act. This is, after all, supposed to be a democracy.

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By Posted on Posted in Peace and War, Politics, Uncategorized

They say the definition of insanity is doing th same thing over and over and expecting different results–like Pelosi and Reid crawling back to Bush with a toothless, no-timeline funding bill on the iraq debacle. Not that the first bill was so great but it least it squeaked out an attempt to take back some of the power the Executive Branch has stolen.

The bill passed in Congress yesterday is simply inexcusable.

I sent this letter to Harry Reid and (slightly modified to reflect and thank her for her personal “no” vote on the appropriation) Nancy Pelosi today:

Funding the war once again without strings is a terrible mistake. I cannot believe you caved in to Bush again! Where is the leadership? If Bush insisted on vetoing the time line, there is no need to have brought *any* bill.

When the Democratic Party calls asking for money, I will *not* be opening my wallet!

In fact, if you were looking for a path to create massive defections to the Green party or some other actual alternative, this is it.

I think Dennis Kucinich has the right idea: if bush vetoes a funding bill with restrictions, you simply don’t give him a bill. Or better yet, you increase the restrictions. Kucinich’s own HR 1234 calls for funding only a withdrawal. A good idea, IMHO.

Use these links to send your own messages:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Politics, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Hey, Senator Edwards, if you think a haircut should cost $400, I’d be glad to give you some shopping lessons. After all, I’ve written books and operated websites on frugality for years. I’ll even give you a copy of my e-book, The Penny-Pinching Hedonist: How to Live Like Royalty with a Peasant’s Pocketbook. It’s got a whole chapter on frugal shopping.

Not only did you pay $400 each for two Beverly Hills haircuts, but you got your campaign to pay for it! Guess which campaign I’m NOT contributing to?

And the funny thing is, you’ve got hair any barber could manage. If you looked like, say, Cher, there might be some justification for spending $100 (though not for getting the campaign to pick up the tab).

BTW, I go to stylist, not a barber, and I get great haircuts. I get them two or three times a year, and pay $20 or $22 (I forget). I’d be glad to introduce you to my hair guy. He’s even a Democrat.

Yes, it’s a legitimate campaign function to look properly groomed. But using other people’s money for a $400 haircut, twice, is shameful. Let the campaign pay the first $20 or $30 of each–and you should reimburse for the balance.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Uncategorized

In a rare act of almost blunt truth-telling–ok, so I’m being facetious–in a mouthful of weasely gobbdelygook–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated the obvious:

“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” Reid said Thursday.

Give me a break–is this the best the Democrats can do? How about some straightforward honest language like “We never should have been in this war in the first place and we’re losing. Time to get out–starting right now.”

Still, even mild-mannered Mr. Mealy Mouth was instantly attacked as unpatriotic. The same article reports this idiotic response from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell:

I can’t begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost.

And this from that darling of the neocons, the once-Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman:

This is exactly the wrong time to question our strategy in Iraq, or that our new strategy has failed.

All I can say to McConnell and Lieberman is to quote Ronald Reagan: “there you go again!” The insidious right-wing attack on the patriotism of anyone who questions this illegal, immoral, and incompetent war continues–and we on the left have the obligation to call the scoundrels on it. Last time I read the Constitution, that very freedom to dissent was a big part of what set the United States apart from other more repressive governments in the 18th century.

Oh, and Lieberman got one thing right: unquestionably, our Iraq strategy has failed.

If our troops (and I respect them enormously, even if I have zero respect for the mission they are forced to perform) are attempting to defend the idea of democracy, that idea starts with the freedom to dissent. And calling us unpatriotic will not get us to shut up.

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By Posted on Posted in Politics, Uncategorized

Doug Schoen writes in the usually sensible Huffington Post that the Democrats should roll over, as usual, and give GWB the blank check he’s looking for in Iraq: no limits on dollars or on deployment.

I think this an extremely wrong-headed and ill-advised idea–some of the worst advice I’ve heard anywhere in quite a while, in fact.

Here’s most of the public comment I made:

The Democrats need to hold fast, and to frame the dialogue thusly:

“We gave GWB a very reasonable bill that funds the war for the time being but begins a phased withdrawal. we are exercising our Constitutional authority as controller of the purse strings and a check on unbridled Presidential power. But Bush wanted a blank check, and that would be negligent–perhaps even criminally irresponsible. We do not want this crime on our hands, and we will not be a party to it. We absolutely refuse to abdicate our responsibilities by bringing forward any kind of blank check bill. Bush is the one who will not negotiate, and who is trying to usurp the power we were granted back in 1787”.

I’m using “framing” here as George Lakoff would use it: to wrap the debate around a construct that brings the public’s reference into focus–just as a black frame on a white wall allows the eye to differentiate elements in the white-background picture hanging within that frame.

The frame I’m proposing above is one that paints the Democrats as patriotic, as responsible–and GWB as overreaching his authority. This frame was not much in evidence in mainstream media during the run-up to the war, and if it had been, perhaps it would have slowed or stopped that unfortunate tide.

For far too long, the Democrats have allowed the right wing to create the frames. We have to take them back, and this is a great place to start.

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Publishing, Uncategorized

I kid you not–here’s the NY Times article.

Much as the cat may have been darling, and much as its authors ight do a great job, I find this absurd. And yet another indicator of the dumbing down of the American public via the media that controls what we see and read (except for those adventurous enough to seek their own sources).

Where are the big advances for books that shape how we actually think and act? that give us a lens to understand some of the craziness in the world.

OK, I like sweet stories about cats and might actually read this book (in a library copy) at some point. It’s not a book I expect I’ll need to own. But good heavens, most books that could change the culture receive paltry advances and paltry publicity, if they sell at all.

If this were now instead of then, would books like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “Silent Spring”, or “Unsafe at Any Speed”–three among dozens of books that actually changed the world–have even been published, or found any significant audience if they had?

I hope one day to see my own Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First in someone’s list of books that changed the world. I didn’t even try for a mainstream publisher, figuring I’d go create an audience and then sell rights to a second edition.

But seriously, isn’t a book about how we got into the Iraq mess and are heading for trouble in Iran (not the subject of my book but of several recent ones) worth more attention than a book abut a cat? Or for that matter, the sordid and tawdry life of Anna Nicole Smith?

Priorities! As a society–we need to look at ours..

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