missing emails may contain truth about 04 election fraud

Makes sense to me, these people are CRIMINALS and belong in prison making license plates instead of trashing our fine country.

Published on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Are Rove’s Missing E-mails the Smoking Guns of the Stolen 2004 Election?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

E-mails being sought from Karl Rove’s computers, and recent revelations about critical electronic conflicts of interest, may be the smoking guns of Ohio’s stolen 2004 election. A thorough recount of ballots and electronic files, preserved by a federal lawsuit, could tell the tale.The major media has come to focus on a large batch of electronic communications which have disappeared from the server of the Republican National Committee, and from White House advisor Rove’s computers. The attention stems from the controversial firing of eight federal prosecutors by Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales.

But the time frame from which these e-mails are missing also includes a critical late night period after the presidential election of 2004. In these crucial hours, computerized vote tallies may have been shifted to move the Ohio vote count from John Kerry to George W. Bush, giving Bush the presidency.

Earlier that day, Rove and Bush flew into Columbus. Local election officials say they met with Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in Columbus. Also apparently in attendance was Matt Damschroder, executive director of the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections.

These four men, along with Ohio GOP chair Bob Bennett, were at the core of a multi-pronged strategy that gave Bush Ohio’s twenty Electoral College votes, and thus the presidency. Bennett and Damschroder held key positions on election boards in the state’s two most populous counties, with the biggest inner city concentrations of Democratic voters.

There were four key phases to the GOP’s election theft strategy:

1. Prior to the election, the GOP focused on massive voter disenfranchisement, with a selective reduction of voter turnout in urban Democratic strongholds. Blackwell issued confusing and contradictory edicts on voter eligibility, registration requirements, and provisional ballots; on shifting precinct locations; on denial and misprinting of absentee ballots, and more. Among other things, election officials, including Bennett, stripped nearly 300,000 voters from registration rolls in heavily Democratic areas in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo.

2. On election day, the GOP focussed on voter intimidation, denial of voting rights to legally eligible ex-felons, denial of voting machines to inner city precincts, malfunctioning of those machines, destruction of provisional ballots and more.

In Franklin, Cuyahoga and other urban counties, huge lines left mostly African-American voters waiting in the rain for three hours and more. A Democratic Party survey shows more than 100,000 voters failed to vote due to these lines, which plagued heavily Democratic inner city precincts (but not Republican suburban ones) throughout the state. The survey shows another 50,000 ballots may have been discarded at the polling stations. In addition, to this day, more than 100,000 machine-rejected and provisional ballots remain uncounted. The official Bush margin of victory was less than 119,000 votes.

3. After the final tabulation of the votes, and the announcement that Bush had won, the GOP strategy focussed on subverting a statewide recount. A filing by the Green and Libertarian Parties required Ohio’s 88 county boards of election to conduct random precinct samplings, to be followed by recounts where necessary.

A lawsuit was filed to delay the seating of Ohio’s Electoral College delegation until after the recount was completed. Among other things, the plaintiffs sued to get access to Rove’s laptop. But Blackwell rushed to certify the delegation before a recount could be completed. The issue became moot, and the suit was dropped. In retaliation, Blackwell tried to impose legal sanctions on the attorneys who filed it.

But two felony convictions have thus far resulted from what prosecutors have called the “rigging” of the recount in Cuyahoga County (where Bennett has been forced to resign his chairmanship of the board of elections). More are likely to follow.

The practices that led to these convictions were apparently repeated in many of Ohio’s 88 counties. The order to violate the law—or at least tacit approval to do so—is almost certain to have come from Blackwell.

4. Ultimately, however, it is the GOP’s computerized control of the vote count that may have been decisive. And here is where Rove’s e-mails, and the wee hours of the morning after the election, are crucial.

Despite the massive disenfranchisement of Ohio Democrats, there is every indication John Kerry won Ohio 2004. Exit polls shown on national television at 12:20am gave Kerry a clear lead in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico. These “purple states” were Democratic blue late in the night, but, against virtually impossible odds, all turned Bush red by morning.

Along the way, Gahanna, Ohio’s “loaves & fishes” vote count, showed 4,258 ballots for Bush in a precinct where just 638 people voted. Voting machines in Youngstown and Columbus lit up for Bush when Kerry’s name was pushed. Rural Republican precincts registered more than 100% turnouts, while inner city Democratic ones went as low as 7%. Warren County declared a “Homeland Security” alert, removed the ballot count from public scrutiny, then recorded a huge, unlikely margin for Bush.

These and many more instances of irregularities and theft were reported at www.freepress.org and then confirmed by U.S. Representative John Conyers and others who researched the election.

But the most critical reversals may have come as exit polls indicated that despite massive Democratic disenfranchisement, and even with preliminary vote count manipulations, Kerry would win Ohio by 4.2%, a margin well in excess of 200,000 votes.

The key to that reversal may be electronic. It has now become widely known that the same web-hosting firm that served a range of GOP websites, including the one for the Republican National Committee, also hosted the official site that Blackwell used to report the Ohio vote count.

This astonishing conflict of interest has been reported at the epluribusmedia.org on-line investigative service. Cross-postings have come from luaptifer at Dailykos and blogger Joseph Cannon’s Cannonfire.blogspot.com. They all confirm that the RNC tech network’s hosting firm is SMARTech.com, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. SMARTech hosts georgew.bush.com, mc.org and gop.com among other Republican web domains, in a bank basement.

Furthermore, the same hosting site that handled redirections from Blackwell’s “official” site also handled the White House e-mail accounts that have become central to investigations of the Gonzales purge of eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were themselves involved in vote fraud investigations.

Conflicts of interest in programming services and remote-access capability appear throughout the RNC’s computer networks, Rove’s secret White House e-mail, and the electronic vehicles used by Blackwell to finally reveal his “official” presidential vote counts for Ohio 2004.

One factor may be Ohio’s electronic touch-screen voting systems, on which were cast more than 800,000 votes in an election decided by about one-seventh that total. Such vulnerabilities, among other things, have been confirmed in exhaustive reports by Conyers’s Committee, by the Government Accountability Office, by the Carter-Baker Commission, by Princeton University, by the Brennan Center, and by others.

But overall, the electronic record of every vote in Ohio was transmitted to the Secretary of State’s office, and hosted in real time in Chattanooga. Under such circumstances, the joint hosting of the White House e-mail system and accessibility by Blackwell and Rove to the same computer networks linked to the Ohio vote count, takes on an added dimension.

Mike Connell, a Republican computer expert, helped create the software for both Ohio’s official 2004 election web site, and for the Bush campaign’s partisan web site during the 2000 election. The success of Connell’s GovTech Solutions has been attributed by Connell to his being “loyal to my network,” including the Bush family.

Blackwell shared those loyalties. Like Connell, he worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign, serving as its Ohio co-chair. He was also in control of the vote count that was being reported on software Bush loyalist Connell helped design.

It was in a crucial period after midnight on election night 2004 that these paired conflicts of interest may have decided the election. As exit polls showed a decisive Kerry victory, there was an unexplained 90-minute void in official reporting of results. By this time, most of the vote counts were coming in from rural areas, which are traditionally Republican, and which, ironically, usually report their results earlier than the Democratic urban areas.

In this time span, Kerry’s lead morphed into a GOP triumph. To explain this “miraculous” shift, Rove invented a myth of the greatest last-second voting surge in US history, allegedly coming from late-voting fundamentalist Republicans. No significant evidence exists to substantiate this claim. In fact, local news reports indicate the heaviest turnouts in most rural areas came early on election day, rather than later.

According to a January 13, 2005, release from Cedarville University, a small Ohio-based Christian academy, Connell’s GovTech Solutions helped make the shared server system run “like a champ…through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results.”

After 2am, despite exit polls showing very much the opposite outcome, those results put Bush back in the White House.

In January, 2005, the U.S. Congress hosted the first challenge to a state’s Electoral College delegation in our nation’s history. At the time, the compromised security of the official Ohio electronic reporting systems was not public knowledge. But the first attempt to subpoena Karl Rove’s computer files had already failed.

Now a second attempt to gain such access is being mounted as the Gonzales scandal deepens.

Congressman Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) has raised “particular concerns about Karl Rove” and his electronic communications about the Gonzales firings.

Rove claims both his own computer records and the RNC’s servers have been purged of e-mails through the time the Ohio vote was being reversed. Rove’s attorney, Robert Kuskin, has told a Congressional inquiry that Rove mistakenly believed his messages to the RNC “were being archived” there.

But the RNC says it has no e-mail records for Rove before 2005. Rob Kelner, an RNC lawyer says efforts to recreate the lost records have had some success. But it’s not yet known whether communications from the 2004 election can be retrieved.

Nor is it known whether the joint access allowed to top GOP operatives Rove and Blackwell was responsible for the election-night reversal that put Bush back in the White House.

But there remains another avenue by which the real outcome of Ohio 2004 could be discovered. Longstanding federal law protected Ohio’s ballots and other election documentation prior to September 3, 2006. Blackwell gave clear orders that these crucial records were to be destroyed on that date.

Prior to the expiration of the federal statutory protection, a civil rights lawsuit was filed in the federal court of Judge Algernon Marbley, asking that the remaining records be preserved. The request was granted in what has become known as the King-Lincoln Bronzeville suit (co-author Bob Fitrakis is an attorney in the case, and Harvey Wasserman is a plaintiff).

Thus, by federal law, the actual ballots and electronic records should be available for the kind of exhaustive recount that was illegally denied—or “rigged,” as prosecutors in Cleveland have put it—by Blackwell, Bennett and their cohorts the first time around.

Ohio’s newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has agreed to take custody of these materials, and to bring them to a central repository, probably in Columbus.

This means that an exhaustive recount could show who really did win the presidential election of 2004.

It may also be possible to learn what roles—electronic or otherwise— Karl Rove and J. Kenneth Blackwell really did play during those crucial 90 minutes in the deep night, when the presidency somehow slipped from John Kerry to George W. Bush.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at http://www.freepress.org/ and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, from the New Press. Fitrakis is publisher, and Wasserman is senior editor, of http://www.freepress.org/ where this story was first published.

Walmart ; looking for a few good case officers.

creepy... I wonder why their needs can't be met by traditional business analyst types?

Wal-Mart recruits intelligence officers

By MARCUS KABEL
BW Exclusives

BENTONVILLE, Ark.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has been recruiting former military and government intelligence officers for a branch of its global security office aimed at identifying threats to the world's largest retailer, including from "suspect individuals and groups".

Wal-Mart's interest in intelligence operatives comes at a time when the retailer is defending itself against allegations by a fired security employee that it ran surveillance operations against targets including critics, dissident shareholders, employees and suppliers. Wal-Mart has denied any wrongdoing.

Wal-Mart posted ads in March on its own web site and sites for security professionals, including the bulletin of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, for "global threat analysts" with a background in government or military intelligence work.

The jobs were listed with the Analytical Research Center, part of Wal-Mart's Global Security division, which is headed by former senior CIA and FBI senior officer Kenneth Senser. The analytical unit was created over the past year and half, according to published comments by its head, Army Special Operations veteran David Harrison.

The job description includes collecting information from "professional contacts" and public data to anticipate and assess threats stemming from "world events, regional/national security climates, and suspect individuals and groups."

"Familiarity with a broad spectrum of information resources and data-mining techniques" is listed among the skills sought, along with a foreign language, preferably Chinese or Spanish.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to comment on the Analytical Research Center for this story or to make any security executives available for interviews.

Many corporations hire law enforcement officers for their security departments.

But Steven Aftergood, who runs the government secrecy project for the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, said Wal-Mart's efforts appear to go beyond what most companies are doing, raising questions about corporate intelligence work outside of the oversight process in place for government spying.

"It's a troubling new departure in corporate security. We're not just talking about security, we're talking about intelligence operations," Aftergood said.

Harrison told a meeting of security professionals last year that Wal-Mart was learning to defend itself by using the vast information it routinely collects about its employees, shoppers and suppliers.

The only public comment to date on the work of the Analystical Research Center, the speech was reported on by the trade magazine Government Security News. Wal-Mart did not dispute the report when contacted by The Associated Press this week.

Harrison told the meeting that Wal-Mart tracks customers including those who use its pharmacies, buy propane tanks and anyone making "bulk purchases" of prepaid cell phones, which some law enforcement officials have tied in the past to terrorist or criminal activities.

Harrison did not elaborate on how that information could be better used, except to say the data could be shared with law enforcement.

Wal-Mart's union-backed critics said culling customer data for intelligence was disturbing.

"The idea that Wal-Mart is creating its own personal CIA should make every American -- Wal-Mart customer or not -- nervous about whether Wal-Mart is invading their privacy or could do so in the future," said Chris Kofinis, spokesman for WakeUpWalMart.com.

Cheney's tax returns fail to mention deferred war profits!

This is what the White house reported as it was represented on Dick's 07 returns.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY AND MRS. CHENEY

RELEASE 2006 INCOME TAX RETURN

Vice President and Mrs. Cheney filed their federal income tax return for 2006 today.

The income tax return shows that the Cheneys owe federal taxes for 2006 of $413,326 on taxable income of $1,614,862. During the course of 2006 the Cheneys paid $464,789 in taxes through withholding and estimated tax payments. The Cheneys elected to apply the resulting $51,463 tax overpayment to their 2007 estimated tax payments.

The wage and salary income reported on the tax return includes the Vice President’s $208,575 government salary. In addition, the tax return reports a pension benefit of $27,500, which the Vice President received as a former director of Union Pacific Corporation. The Vice President became eligible for this benefit in 2006 when he turned 65. The tax return also reports Mrs. Cheney’s book royalty income, which includes a partial royalty advance on a book she is writing about growing up in Wyoming. It also reports wage and salary income from her continuing work at the American Enterprise Institute and a pension benefit of $32,000, which she received as a former director of Reader’s Digest. The amounts of the pension benefits received by the Vice President and by Mrs. Cheney are fixed and will not increase or decrease based on changes in the earnings or revenues of either company.

The Cheneys donated $104,425 to charity in 2006. This brings the Cheneys’ total charitable contributions during his Vice Presidency to $7,800,019.

# # #

Only $504,150 is accounted for on this press release, on combined income of $1,614,862.

How about the "deferred compensation" from Halliburton? Has it run its course, or is the administration choosing to not mention it in this year's press release?

Typically it is nearly equivalent to Cnehey's salary as Vice President.

"In addition to his $190,134 government salary, Cheney earned $162,392 in deferred compensation from Halliburton Co., the Dallas energy services firm he headed until August 16, 2000."

- San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2003

"Vice President Dick Cheney received $178,437 in deferred pay last year from Halliburton Co., the Texas oil-field services company he once headed that has since received billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq ... Cheney reported $198,600 in vice-presidential salary for the year."

-Reuters/ CNN.com, April 13, 2004

In 2001, The US invaded Afghanistan. Halliburton support personnel went in first and built the infrastructure.

Cheney's Halliburton bonus and deferred compensation that year: $1,598,977

In 2002, Cheney agitated for the invasion of Iraq. Halliburton received an open-ended, no-bid contract to repair and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure.

Cheney's deferred compensation for 2002: $162,392

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. Security forces from Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root -- essentially a corporate mercenary operation -- were on the ground.

Cheney's deferred compensation for 2003: $178,437

Cheney's deferred compensation for 2004: $194,852

Cheney's deferred compensation for 2005: $211,465.

Cheney's salary as Vice President in 2005: $205,031.

The Cheneys' gross income for 2005, including exercised Halliburton stock options: $8,819,006

The Cheneys' 2005 tax refund after giving nearly $7 million to charity: $1,938,930

Marx Cafe Tonight!!

Hey all, join me tonight for a night of drinks and beats! It's going down at 9pm (or later) depends when I get up there. Going to want to get a decent meal before I start playing however so plan on 10pm, the Greek style lamb chops are pretty decent, big ups to the wienerschnitzel as well, it's all decent eats. BOH! See ya there.

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Govt employees must pay own way!

Cancel the damn program if it's being so flagrantly misused. Why are govt employees more deserving than any other commuter? Are they a special class of workers? No, they are not, they are job slaves like any other and shouldn't be afforded special privileges. Instead take the mountain of cash being wasted on these office trolls and use it subsidize commuter travel for households earning less than $20K annually. That would put to good use what would otherwise be squandered thoughtlessly. What's next? Allowing govt employees to use HOV lanes?

GAO Finds Fraud in Commuter Program
Federal Workers Selling Transit Cards

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; Page A01

It's a perk of federal employment: a free monthly subsidy that pays for commutes on public transportation. But scores of workers have been taking the government for a ride, selling their benefits on the Internet and pocketing millions in cash each year.

The program, which covers 300,000 federal employees nationwide, has been abused by workers across a variety of agencies, the Government Accountability Office will report to Congress today. Workers in the Washington region alone have defrauded the government of at least $17 million a year, with the actual figure probably several million dollars higher, according to the GAO.

read the rest of the story...

Return to the gold standard?

Perhaps we should re-examine the gold standard as a way to prop up our failing Dollar internationally.

Gold and Economic Freedom
by Dr. Alan Greenspan, 1966

This article originally appeared in a newsletter called The Objectivist published in 1966
and was reprinted in Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal"

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense - perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire - that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.

In order to understand the source of their antagonism, it is necessary first to understand the specific role of gold in a free society.

Money is the common denominator of all economic transactions. It is that commodity which serves as a medium of exchange, is universally acceptable to all participants in an exchange economy as payment for their goods or services, and can, therefore, be used as a standard of market value and as a store of value, i.e., as a means of saving.

The existence of such a commodity is a precondition of a division of labor economy. If men did not have some commodity of objective value which was generally acceptable as money, they would have to resort to primitive barter or be forced to live on self-sufficient farms and forgo the inestimable advantages of specialization. If men had no means to store value, i.e., to save, neither long-range planning nor exchange would be possible.

What medium of exchange will be acceptable to all participants in an economy is not determined arbitrarily. First, the medium of exchange should be durable. In a primitive society of meager wealth, wheat might be sufficiently durable to serve as a medium, since all exchanges would occur only during and immediately after the harvest, leaving no value-surplus to store. But where store-of-value considerations are important, as they are in richer, more civilized societies, the medium of exchange must be a durable commodity, usually a metal. A metal is generally chosen because it is homogeneous and divisible: every unit is the same as every other and it can be blended or formed in any quantity. Precious jewels, for example, are neither homogeneous nor divisible. More important, the commodity chosen as a medium must be a luxury. Human desires for luxuries are unlimited and, therefore, luxury goods are always in demand and will always be acceptable. Wheat is a luxury in underfed civilizations, but not in a prosperous society. Cigarettes ordinarily would not serve as money, but they did in post-World War II Europe where they were considered a luxury. The term "luxury good" implies scarcity and high unit value. Having a high unit value, such a good is easily portable; for instance, an ounce of gold is worth a half-ton of pig iron.

In the early stages of a developing money economy, several media of exchange might be used, since a wide variety of commodities would fulfill the foregoing conditions. However, one of the commodities will gradually displace all others, by being more widely acceptable. Preferences on what to hold as a store of value, will shift to the most widely acceptable commodity, which, in turn, will make it still more acceptable. The shift is progressive until that commodity becomes the sole medium of exchange. The use of a single medium is highly advantageous for the same reasons that a money economy is superior to a barter economy: it makes exchanges possible on an incalculably wider scale.

Whether the single medium is gold, silver, seashells, cattle, or tobacco is optional, depending on the context and development of a given economy. In fact, all have been employed, at various times, as media of exchange. Even in the present century, two major commodities, gold and silver, have been used as international media of exchange, with gold becoming the predominant one. Gold, having both artistic and functional uses and being relatively scarce, has significant advantages over all other media of exchange. Since the beginning of World War I, it has been virtually the sole international standard of exchange. If all goods and services were to be paid for in gold, large payments would be difficult to execute and this would tend to limit the extent of a society's divisions of labor and specialization. Thus a logical extension of the creation of a medium of exchange is the development of a banking system and credit instruments (bank notes and deposits) which act as a substitute for, but are convertible into, gold.

A free banking system based on gold is able to extend credit and thus to create bank notes (currency) and deposits, according to the production requirements of the economy. Individual owners of gold are induced, by payments of interest, to deposit their gold in a bank (against which they can draw checks). But since it is rarely the case that all depositors want to withdraw all their gold at the same time, the banker need keep only a fraction of his total deposits in gold as reserves. This enables the banker to loan out more than the amount of his gold deposits (which means that he holds claims to gold rather than gold as security of his deposits). But the amount of loans which he can afford to make is not arbitrary: he has to gauge it in relation to his reserves and to the status of his investments.

When banks loan money to finance productive and profitable endeavors, the loans are paid off rapidly and bank credit continues to be generally available. But when the business ventures financed by bank credit are less profitable and slow to pay off, bankers soon find that their loans outstanding are excessive relative to their gold reserves, and they begin to curtail new lending, usually by charging higher interest rates. This tends to restrict the financing of new ventures and requires the existing borrowers to improve their profitability before they can obtain credit for further expansion. Thus, under the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an economy's stability and balanced growth. When gold is accepted as the medium of exchange by most or all nations, an unhampered free international gold standard serves to foster a world-wide division of labor and the broadest international trade. Even though the units of exchange (the dollar, the pound, the franc, etc.) differ from country to country, when all are defined in terms of gold the economies of the different countries act as one-so long as there are no restraints on trade or on the movement of capital. Credit, interest rates, and prices tend to follow similar patterns in all countries. For example, if banks in one country extend credit too liberally, interest rates in that country will tend to fall, inducing depositors to shift their gold to higher-interest paying banks in other countries. This will immediately cause a shortage of bank reserves in the "easy money" country, inducing tighter credit standards and a return to competitively higher interest rates again.

A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World Was I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.

But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline-argued economic interventionists-why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely-it was claimed-there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. It consisted of twelve regional Federal Reserve banks nominally owned by private bankers, but in fact government sponsored, controlled, and supported. Credit extended by these banks is in practice (though not legally) backed by the taxing power of the federal government. Technically, we remained on the gold standard; individuals were still free to own gold, and gold continued to be used as bank reserves. But now, in addition to gold, credit extended by the Federal Reserve banks ("paper reserves") could serve as legal tender to pay depositors.

When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's.

With a logic reminiscent of a generation earlier, statists argued that the gold standard was largely to blame for the credit debacle which led to the Great Depression. If the gold standard had not existed, they argued, Britain's abandonment of gold payments in 1931 would not have caused the failure of banks all over the world. (The irony was that since 1913, we had been, not on a gold standard, but on what may be termed "a mixed gold standard"; yet it is gold that took the blame.) But the opposition to the gold standard in any form-from a growing number of welfare-state advocates-was prompted by a much subtler insight: the realization that the gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending (the hallmark of the welfare state). Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money, by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy's tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government's promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. They have created paper reserves in the form of government bonds which-through a complex series of steps-the banks accept in place of tangible assets and treat as if they were an actual deposit, i.e., as the equivalent of what was formerly a deposit of gold. The holder of a government bond or of a bank deposit created by paper reserves believes that he has a valid claim on a real asset. But the fact is that there are now more claims outstanding than real assets. The law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes with the money proceeds of the government bonds financed by bank credit expansion.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Greenspan, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
1987 to January 31, 2006 | Federal Reserve Board

Marx Cafe tonight!!

I'll be spinning classic garage and modern 2step at Marx Cafe tonight. Music hits the ears at 9pm. Be there!

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Bush gets an "F" from Lee Iacocca

Wow, everybody is turning their backs on this clown. About damn time.

Iacocca bashes Bush in new book

Ex-Chrysler CEO also rips Congress, but the harshest criticism goes to president's leadership.
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Lee Iacocca, author of the original business management best-seller, is giving President Bush an "F" in leadership.

In a book to be released Tuesday, the former Chrysler CEO -- who supported Bush's first campaign in 2000 but backed Sen. John Kerry four years later -- accused Bush of leading the nation to war "on a pack of lies" and lacking the basic components of good leadership.

"I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while," Iacocca writes, according to excerpts from "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" released on the Web site of publisher Simon & Schuster.

The book, co-written by New York journalist Catherine Whitney, comes 23 years after Iacocca's best-selling autobiography "Iacocca," which reshaped the way the publishing industry viewed business books. USA Today recently ranked the book among the 25 most influential among publishers and readers over the past 25 years.

In addition to politics, Iacocca weighs in on his experiences at Chrysler and the future of the U.S. auto industry in typically blunt fashion.

His latest broadside is in character, said Matthew Seeger, chairman of the communication department of Wayne State University and author of a book on Iacocca's speeches.

"As he's gotten older, he's gotten more blunt, more willing to take stands on issues," Seeger said.

But tough words from Iacocca may not carry the same weight they once did, said David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Michigan.

"Some people might have some awfully harsh criticism of Lee Iacocca, too," Cole said.

Despite his stature as the savior of Chrysler in the 1980s, Cole said, other events, including his failed bid with Kirk Kerkorian to take over the company in the 1990s, have diminished his clout.

Iacocca has described himself as a political independent, and his new book is the latest twist in political history that includes a brief flirtation with his own run for president. He had a close relationship with Democrat Gov. James Blanchard and President Reagan during his time at Chrysler; he made ads for President Bush in 2000 but made campaign appearances with Kerry four years later; and he made more ads, this time for GOP gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, last year.

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening?" Iacocca writes. "Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.' "

Disdain for Washington is nothing new from Iacocca, said Gerald Meyers, former chairman of American Motors and a business professor at the University of Michigan. Recalling a trip to talk to lawmakers in the 1970s about the Clean Air Act, Meyers said, Iacocca had little regard for politicians.

"Zero respect. Nada. No respect whatsoever," Meyers said.

Iacocca has tough things to say about Congress, corporate America, the press and even the voters who put the nation's current leadership in power. But his harshest criticism is saved for Bush.

# He savages Bush's famous determination: "George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping," Iacocca writes. "There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty."

# He accuses Bush of substituting macho for courage: "Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk."

# And he scoffs at Bush's business-degree background: "Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters."

White House spokesman Alex Conant said he had not seen the book. "We don't do book reviews at the White House," he said.

Simon & Schuster says the book will also include Iacocca's thoughts on how U.S. businesses can compete with rising economies in China and India. And he calls for government action to address the massive health care costs facing the Detroit's automakers and other U.S. businesses.

"Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing," he writes. "Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'the Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies?"

You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.

bush is wrong, no leg left with which to stand

Who actually belives this line anymore? Not the Heritage Foundation, or the Brookings Institute. So why are we fighting a war in Iraq again?

Experts accuse Bush of exaggerating threat
By William Douglas
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - It's become President Bush's mantra, his main explanation for why he won't withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon.

In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that "this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here."

The line, which Bush repeated Wednesday in a speech to troops at California's Fort Irwin, suggests a chilling picture of warfare on American streets.

But is it true?

Military and diplomatic analysts say it isn't. They accuse Bush of exaggerating the threat that enemy forces in Iraq pose to the U.S. mainland.

"The president is using a primitive, inarticulate argument that leaves him open to criticism and caricature," said James Jay Carafano, a homeland security and counterterrorism expert for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy organization. "It's a poor choice of words that doesn't convey the essence of the problem - that walking away from a problem doesn't solve anything."

U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush's own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.

Foreign-born jihadists are present in Iraq, but they're believed to number only between 4 percent and 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgent fighters - 1,200 to 3,000 terrorists - according to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center.

"Attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence," said a February DIA report.

While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time - whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not - the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, experts say.

James Lewis, a U.S. foreign policy analyst at CSIS, called Bush's assertion oversimplistic, but added that there's a slight chance a few enemy combatants could make their way to the United States after a U.S. troop withdrawal.

"There's a grain of truth in Bush saying it's better to fight them there rather than here, but it's also overstated," Lewis said. "It's not like there's going to be gun battles in the United States."

Daniel Benjamin, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, agreed.

"There are very few foreign fighters who are going to be leaving the area because they don't have the skills or languages that would give them access to the United States," said Benjamin, who served as the National Security Council's director for transnational threats from 1998 to 1999. "I'm not saying events in Iraq aren't going to embolden jihadists. But I think the president's formulations call for a leap of faith."

"The war in Iraq isn't preventing terrorist attacks on America," said one U.S. intelligence official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he's contradicting the president and other top officials. "If anything, that - along with the way we've been treating terrorist suspects - may be inspiring more Muslims to think of us as the enemy."

Carafano and Lewis believe that a U.S. troop pullout would embolden Islamic jihadists, but that they're much more likely to stay closer to home and spread violence to neighboring countries with poor records of combating terrorism, such as Somalia, Morocco, Algeria and perhaps Egypt, than they are to try to penetrate America.

Increased terrorism in those places would tax the United States, which would have to deal with the economic costs, global refugees and health crises that combat in those countries could produce.

"The danger is not that they'll follow us home," Carafano said. "The problems will come to our doorstep, not the terrorists."

Lewis of CSIS believes that a U.S. pullout could prompt some foreign fighters in Iraq to go home, head to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces there or move to Europe, where Muslim anger is high and there are more Muslim communities to blend into.

"The United States is a distant (fourth)," he said.

marx cafe tonight

Yes, that's right. You heard it here first. Music starts at 10pm.

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

WOW

EWWWWWWWWW!!!!

OMG I am never going to order food from Manny & Olga's! YYUUUKKK!! This picture was taken on 14th street. It's making me sick thinking of the food I have eaten from there over the years.

Homeless people in libraries.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=180836

This is a really interesting article that I tripped across earlier in the day. Pretty foul reading, eye opening though; hope your done eating.

Marx Cafe tonight!

Hey it's almost Tuesday nite again, so for me that indicates a trip to the DJ booth at the Marx Cafe is right around the corner. Hope to see you there!

Music starts at 9pm.

3203 Mount Pleasant St. NW

Copper theft is serious business

This theft amazes me, and it's only going to get worse if copper prices continue their upward trend. I wish this report would have included the other side of this type of transaction; who are these theives selling their purloined wire to? Someone is buying their booty, otherwise there isn't much incentive to steal it in the first place. There's a copper fence market then, some unscruplous smelter no doubt.

Network World's LANs & Routers Newsletter, 04/03/07

Copper theft is incredibly widespread
By Jeff Caruso

Who knew that the copper wiring in your network was such an investment? Thieves everywhere are stealing copper as prices for the commodity have stayed at high levels - and they're risking their lives to get it.

Blame China. Apparently the country's rapid economic growth is behind the huge worldwide demand for copper. According to a Bloomberg article this week, demand for copper in China may increase as much as 10% this year. Prices will reach $3.50 per pound in the next few weeks, and may soon rebound to the record of $4 set last year.

Last week the Lowell (Mass.) Sun reported that two men were electrocuted when they allegedly tried to steal copper wiring from a transformer in Tyngsboro, Mass.

These were not the sharpest tools in the shed. They had applied bolt cutters to a wire that carried 13,000 volts, according to the paper.

Stealing copper is, of course, rampant. Over a year ago I relayed the news of 130 light poles that had been stolen from Baltimore streets because they were filled with electrical wires. But there are tons of more recent examples.

In Memphis last week, WREG-TV (Memphis) reported that thieves had been stripping copper from air-conditioning units at local businesses. In a recent case, someone turned on a vandalized air conditioner, and the thieves had left loose wires in the wall - the resulting fire did $45,000 worth of damage to a beauty shop.

In Palm Springs, Calif., two were arrested this week for allegedly stealing copper from wind towers. In Honolulu, experts this week estimated it would cost taxpayers a million bucks to replace the 225 light poles stolen from the sides of Hawaiian freeways. Police said the value of the stolen copper was about $420,000.

I could go on and on.

Now the target is mostly large electrical equipment, where the most copper is, so your Cat-5E copper wiring is probably pretty safe. But hey, you never know. How 'bout that fiber?

EV event in DC

This sounds like something i might be interested in. Going to try and check it out!

The Electric Vehicle Association of Washington, DC and the National Electric Drag Racing Association are putting on an exhibition of electric vehicles and their capabilities called the Power of DC. The event has been held for the last six years at the Mason-Dixon Drag Way in Hagerstown, Maryland. This year, the seventh year of the event, we are adding an autocross event the day before the drag race. This will be an EV autocross event, (dubbed EVautoX). The EVautoX will take place at Hagerstown Community College June 2nd, admission is free. The electric vehicle drag race event will take place at the Mason Dixon Drag Way on June 3rd, spectator admission is $5.

Because of the added event of the EVautoX, the Power of DC organization is in need of sponsors. There is growing interest in plug-in vehicles and this is the closest sanctioned event of its kind to Washington, DC. Sponsors of significance will have their logo placed on the events official T-shirt.

The Power of DC is mainly an exhibition demonstrating the speed and power that can be achieved using electricity as a fuel. What better way to show the acceleration capabilities of electric vehicles than through a drag race. The drag race has helped to dispel the sometimes common perception that electric vehicles are slow off the line. This year the Power of DC will be showing electric vehicles maneuverability, range and look through the EVautoX, which tests electric vehicles in slalom like timed courses, range courses and in a beauty contest called the Show-n-Shine.

At the demonstrations we will have a super efficient, super aerodynamic, and super light weight EV called the AZTEC. This vehicle was the winner of the commuter category in the 1994 American Tour de Sol. The University of West Virginia will be bringing its electrically powered Formula race car, (called a Formula Lightning when electric). The Formula Lightning vehicle can reach speeds up to 145 miles an hour on a race track without any pollutants coming from the vehicle. There will be other vehicles there to see and to touch, such as a solar panel clad Destiny 2000, a convertible Cabriolet, a few home converted Ford Escorts, a Toyota built RAV4 EV, and a Solectria Force. All vehicles that are worth coming to the show to see touch and ask the owners questions about. There will also be vehicles built by high school students, such as the Miramar 944 Porsche, and Shawn Lawless's famous Orange Juice dragster, as I said plenty of vehicles to see and touch. But there is more to the electric vehicle movement than just electric vehicles.

The electric vehicles movement is part of the larger alternative fuels movement. There will be demonstrations of solar panels, solar ovens, evacuated tube water heating and more. We still have room for exhibitors, so the door is open for organizations and companies to display their alternative fuel and energy products at the events.

Even though the Power of DC is a well attended event, this year our hope is to make it even bigger. We are asking that all schools, high schools, colleges, universities, and all organizations that are working on alternative fuels and electric drive trains, if they have products or vehicles to showcase to bring them to the event. We would really like to see a solar powered vehicle, one that was built to compete in competitions like the World Solar Challenge to be displayed at the event. We believe that advanced battery manufacturers and researchers would find a welcome home at these events. Organizations that are developing and selling electric motors for the hybrid and plug-in markets would be in line with the theme of the event. Automobile manufacturers exhibiting their hybrid technology would be a perfect fit. What ever you have that you feel the public should know about in terms of automotive advanced technology, alternative fuels and alternative energy contact us. I am sure we can make room for you in the event.

So, we need your assistance. First thing we would like you to do is spread the word about the Power of DC. Come and be there your self, bring family members, tell friends to make a weekend of it and come and have a good time. The second thing we need help on is finding sponsors. If you know of an organization or company that would be interested in beefing up its green credentials, here is their opportunity. The Power of DC is that event that has vast popular appeal, from the environmentalist to the automotive gear head, from the peace nick to the security hawk, the Power of DC brings all these groups together on common ground. Sponsoring our event upsets no one. Thirdly, bring your stuff. If you have an electric vehicle or an alternative fueled vehicle of any kind, bring it to the event. If you work in batteries, electric motors, controllers, capacitors or power electronics, bring it to the event and show it off. We welcome you. If you are in the solar panel, solar hot water heating business, if you sell high efficiency appliances, super insulation, bring it to the show. EV people tend to purchase those things also to the tune of 40%. For example, 40% of electric vehicle owners in California also have solar panels on their homes. It is precisely the market you are looking for. Car dealers, if you have hybrids of any kind, whether they be small cars to large trucks, this is the place to be. Show electric vehicles owners need to tow their vehicles long distances for shows. A hybrid truck is just the thing to bring to such an event. If you bring it, we will make room for it. In the end what we need is to bring your selves and your friends and family, bring sponsors, and bring your stuff. With that the Power of DC will become the catalyst to making the world better for our children and our children's children, but we will be having so much fun doing it, too.

For more information on this exciting EVent visit our website at
http://www.powerofdc.com

To Register, fill out our convenient Registration Form at
http://www.powerofdc.com/lets_race.html

A downloadable file of the EVent flyer is available at
http://www.powerofdc.com/powerofdc_flyer.pdf

For sponsorship opportunity contact Chip Gribben the organizer of the
Power of DC
futurev@radix.net
240-687-1678

For EVautoX information contact Mike Harvey
info@harveyev.com

And if you don't know who to contact, contact me and we will figure it
out.
Joe Lado
joelado@yahoo.com