Latest Bush Flouting Of The Law Is Over EPA Ozone Rules

By Manifesto Joe

The Bush administration's contempt for the law involves a litany that goes back pretty much to Jan. 20, 2001, and even before then, if one includes the presidential campaign and an administration-"elect".

Let's add one more outrage to the long, long list. The Washington Post reports that Il Doofus himself intervened in an EPA ozone rules matter this week in an astonishing way:

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.

So, where was the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency while this was happening?

WaPo again: The effort to rewrite the language -- on the day the agency faced a statutory deadline -- forced EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to postpone at the last moment a scheduled news conference to announce the new rules. It finally took place at 6 p.m., five hours later than planned.

This is just one more among hundreds of "outrages of the day" that many have observed about the Bush administration from the beginning. But it brings to mind the disappointment of many who see this conduct for what it is. By now I would have hoped that Dick Cheney would be facing impeachment proceedings, and that the hot seat would be dusted off next for Il Doofus hisownself. But we seem to live in an age in which moral courage is lacking in high places, even among those from whom it was most expected.

To read the entirety of this particular outrage from Il Doofus and the Gang, go here.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Michael Parenti, In Rare Form

I don't always agree with radical political analyst Michael Parenti, but he's nothing short of great in this lecture carried by a blogger friend of mine. Here goes:

Click here. And check out Vierotchka (see my blog roll). She's got a great site.

--MJ

Economic Trilogy, Part 3: BMW Offshoring Jobs To South Carolina

By Manifesto Joe

Back when I posted a piece called In Bush Era, U.S. Has Become A Third-World Country, I was at least half joking. It doesn't look so much like a joke now.

BMW, the German automaker, announced Monday that it will expand its plant in South Carolina, spending $750 million and adding 500 jobs at their facility in Greer (Population: something over 20,000). The company produced 155,000 vehicles last year in South Carolina and expects to increase production to 240,000 by 2012.

Simply on its face, this seems like good news. South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, was in Greer for the shindig announcement. The first take would be that, hell, jobs are jobs.

It comes right after Munich-based BMW announced that it is cutting 7.5 percent of its German work force and then increasing production in the U.S. Among companies in European Union nations, locales like South Carolina seem to have become the new Bangalore, India, types of destinations when it comes to offshoring jobs.

Economists are great at academic side-stepping -- I know from having worked with several of them. The first thing mentioned was the sharp decline in the value of the dollar relative to the value of the Euro. That is affecting trade between the U.S. and the EU, and not really in a bad way for the U.S. Suddenly, we're on our way to running a trade surplus with somebody on the planet. EU exports to the U.S. are increasing, but our exports to Europe are now increasing even more because of the cheap dollar. This will help the U.S. balance of payments. And that needs all the help it can get.

But the bottom line that isn't prominently mentioned is -- cheap nonunion labor. BMW isn't talking this up much, but they acknowledge that a reason they're doing this is because the South Carolina work force works cheaper than workers in Germany.

From The Associated Press, here's the typical comment on this from a U.S. economic source:

"This is completely driven by the plunge in the dollar," said Greg Gardner with Oliver Wyman, publisher of the Harbour Report on automotive manufacturing activity. "It is untenable to produce at a much higher cost in Germany."

The euro climbed to record heights Friday, reaching $1.5463 before falling back to $1.5335 in late trading after the Federal Reserve announced it would provide more cash to banks that need it. That means European goods cost more for Americans to buy.

By building the cars in the U.S., BMW can save money on the lower dollar and on wages since its South Carolina workers make less than German workers, Gardner said.

Jeff Foxworthy may need to add something to his joke book, although it's not very funny: If you build Eurotrash carburetors for half the wages they pay over there -- then you might be a redneck.

What's next? How about computer call centers in Mississippi? In terms of communication, I can't imagine that the accent problem could be any worse than it is when you get "Kenny" in Bangalore at 3 in the morning.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Druggy Water: Drinking From The City Supply Lowered My Cholesterol 30 Points In 30 Days

By Manifesto Joe

No, not really. But the results of an Associated Press investigation released Sunday could make you wonder what's in your municipal water supply, if that's the water you drink.

The AP reported that traces of medical drugs were found in the municipal water supplies of 24 major metro areas from coast to coast. The tap water going to 41 million Americans showed these tiny quantities.

City officials were quick to point out that the amounts of pharmaceutical chemicals and over-the-counter substances here are minuscule, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion. But scientists are a bit worried about the long-term consequences for Americans' health.

And, it raises another question: Could this be yet another indicator of how egregiously overmedicated Americans have become at the hands of greedy drug companies and myopically compliant doctors?

Here are some of AP's findings:

-- Officials in Philadelphia said testing there discovered 56 pharmaceuticals or byproducts in treated drinking water, including medicines for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems. Sixty-three pharmaceuticals or byproducts were found in the city's watersheds.

-- Anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications were detected in a portion of the treated drinking water for 18.5 million people in Southern California.

--Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey analyzed a Passaic Valley Water Commission drinking water treatment plant, which serves 850,000 people in Northern New Jersey, and found a metabolized angina medicine and the mood-stabilizing carbamazepine in drinking water.

_A sex hormone was detected in San Francisco's drinking water.

-- The drinking water for Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas tested positive for six pharmaceuticals.

-- Three medications, including an antibiotic, were found in drinking water supplied to Tucson, Ariz.

The situation is undoubtedly worse than suggested by the positive test results in the major population centers documented by the AP.

The AP found that officials in many cities weren't terribly cooperative. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public "doesn't know how to interpret the information" and might be unduly alarmed.

For whatever reassurance this provides, the Environmental Protection Agency is aware of the phenomenon. AP again: "We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Despite the official assertions of drinking-water safety, this sounds like a job for a congressional committee. Perhaps experience has made me a little paranoid, but when there's secrecy, that usually means somebody has something to hide.

AP again:

The New York state health department and the USGS tested the source of the city's water, upstate. They found trace concentrations of heart medicine, infection fighters, estrogen, anti-convulsants, a mood stabilizer and a tranquilizer.

City water officials declined repeated requests for an interview. In a statement, they insisted that "New York City's drinking water continues to meet all federal and state regulations regarding drinking water quality in the watershed and the distribution system" — regulations that do not address trace pharmaceuticals.

Some scientists theorize that the ever-increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals and OTC meds that people take are a big part of this problem. Much of the stuff leaves your body in your urine. And, here's a hint -- think before you ever flush unused pills down the commode.

Another disturbing thought is that this problem is not confined to the waters of the U.S. Such contamination has been found in chemical analysis of waters all over the world.

There are other facets of the problem. Many modern drugs, such as cholesterol meds, tranquilizers and anti-epileptic drugs, resist the most up-to-date wastewater treatment processes. And, how about animals?

AP again: Human waste isn't the only source of contamination. Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

Water sampled downstream of a Nebraska feedlot had steroid levels four times as high as the water taken upstream. Male fathead minnows living in that downstream area had low testosterone levels and small heads.

Are the fathead minnows our coal-mine canaries?

The recently deceased novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote about how drinking alcohol is made, as sort of a micro-allegory. The culture begins as yeast -- and as the yeast fungi feed on sugar, they shit alcohol (that's their version of feces). In fermentation, the increasingly polluted environment gradually destroys yeast, leaving the alcohol
behind for us reprobates to enjoy. I hope this doesn't really bother anyone next time they pour a couple of fingers of Jack Daniels -- that they're drinking yeast shit. It's never deterred me.

The relevance of this allegory is that we -- the yeast fungi who somehow climbed up out of the muck, began walking on two legs and invented plumbing -- seem to be doing something like that to ourselves on a grandiose scale, and on several fronts. This, if it's as bad as some researchers fear, is just one more way we may be doing ourselves in as a species.

There are serious inconveniences that this phenomenon would have potential to cause. Most men would never aspire to breast enlargement; I have yet to receive a spam e-mail from Stephanie or Inga making me such an offer. I certainly wouldn't want it courtesy of estrogen in my tap water.

Congress persons, step up to the plate. We need panel hearings on this issue.

To read the entire AP report, go here.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

An Update On The AWOL Economy

By Manifesto Joe

In case there was any doubt after Thursday's bad news (see the previous post on this blog) that the U.S. economy is sort of absent without leave, Friday's news, and more tidbits from Thursday, probably erased it all.

Here are more economic news nuggets for your dining and dancing pleasure:

-- The Labor Department estimated that the U.S. lost 63,000 jobs in February, far more than analysts had expected.

-- This from The New York Times: "On Thursday, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that about 7.9 percent of all loans - a record high - were past due or in foreclosure. Until the third quarter of last year, the rate had not climbed above 7 percent since 1979."

-- More from The Times: "Home prices are falling in almost every part of the country, a phenomenon that Fed officials and many other experts until recently thought was all but impossible, and some analysts now predict that average home prices will ultimately fall 20 percent from their peak in 2006."

-- And still more from The Times: "The effect is reducing household wealth. According to data this week from the Fed, net household wealth declined by $900 billion in the fourth quarter of last year."

-- And yet still more from The Times: "Stocks dipped yet again Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 146.70 points to close at 11,893.69. The S&P 500 was off 10.97 points to close at 1293.37, while the NASAQ was down 8.01 points to 2212.49."

And then, this platitude from "President" Shithead:

"I know this is a difficult time for our economy, but we recognized the problem early (HAWHAWHAWHAWHAW...) and provided the economy with a booster shot. We will begin to see the impact over the coming months." (There is apparently going to be such impact, I don't know how they're going to afford enough Ex-Lax to handle it.)

Pardon my doubts -- I think the recession is very much unofficially here, and a deficit-stoking tax rebate that will seep through the economy in the summer isn't likely to head it off, in the least.

I speculate here, but I hope with all body and soul that we are finally emerging from a very long era of bad economic policy. The laissez-faire, "free market" model seems to keep rising from the dead, but I don't think that's evidence of its strength. It seems to have been discredited over and over.

I think what gives it a perversely enduring strength is its seeming justification for swinish behavior by the economic elite. Consider that these are the folks who give the greatest sums to political campaigns, of both parties.

If you are among the privileged, it's a way to elude guilt. After all, you're hiring gardeners, maids, drivers and cooks. You leave big tips at the country club. Rationalization: How can all this largess not "trickle down?" And then, those nasty government people just want more and more tax money?

I'm actually supposed to help pay for the roads and bridges that I only have my hired help drive over? I'm supposed to help pay for the public library? (Barnes and Noble has all the coffee-table books I want). Those liberals ought to just go out and get themselves honest jobs. Wait, what's this in the paper about outsourcing jobs to India? Oh, OK -- none of my help is affected.

And remember to have that personal secretary keep that subscription to National Review current. God rest Bill Buckley's soul.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

What Economy, Stupid?

By Manifesto Joe

Yeah, the title is an exaggeration. But it comes just after a day of very bad economic news. The recession is not yet official, but I think the question is no longer if, but when. Here are a few news nuggets from Thursday:

-- For the first time since World War II, U.S. homeowner debt now exceeds home equity.

-- In the fourth quarter of 2007, the percentage of U.S. homes caught up in foreclosure proceedings reached a record 0.83 percent.

-- The benchmark crude oil price climbed to a record $105.47. The prices of staple
groceries -- bread, milk, eggs and such -- have been been climbing in tandem.

-- The Dow Jones industrial average fell 214 points Thursday and is flirting with a dip below the 12,000 mark.

I would dare say that Republican "free" market economic policies have been given every chance to work and have proved wanting. I got my "tinkle-down" in the '80s. I'm still waiting for the "trickle-down."

The Bush "stimulus" tax sweetie-pie has yet to make its way into the economy, but don't look for it to be an answer. It will add to the deficit; and it won't help people who are about to lose their homes, their jobs, and their cars, right now. It won't help those who have been waiting for years to qualify for SSI disability or Medicaid because of the enormous backlog of applicants facing pared-down skeleton crews. It won't help the millions of medically uninsured, a number of whom are simply sent home to die.

I could stretch this litany on and on, but I won't belabor it. It should be clear that the U.S. has gone through an almost 30-year robber baron revival, a Gilded Age redux. This year, the electorate has one more opportunity to put a stop to it.

Fasten your seat belts. As Bette Davis once told moviegoers, it's going to be a bumpy ride. There won't be anything meaningful done this year because Big Business has just the cretin they chose in the Oval Office. We're looking to January 2009 for any genuine solutions.

One thing that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton more or less agree on is that taxes on the rich will have to be raised. Clinton, in one of their numerous debates, suggested that the tax structure should be returned to where it was at the beginning of 2001, before George W. Bush pushed through his sweet tax meat for the wealthy and big corporations.

That was the tax rate passed in 1993, the first year of Bill Clinton's presidency, by one vote in the House. It got no Republican votes. The marginal rates were raised, but not even close to what they had been 12 years earlier.

I'll rehash something from a previous post: You remember what happened during those '90s, the Clinton era? Republican opponents of his program predicted economic collapse ...

Unemployment rose to 25 percent. Inflation went double-digit, and interest rates topped 20 percent. There were food riots in the streets of heartland cities. Teenagers, put out of their homes, rode the rails, stole and ate yard chickens and prostituted themselves to degenerates.

The Bonus Army marched on Washington ...

Sorry -- wrong presidents, wrong eras. Seriously, the Clinton plan brought a dramatic turnaround in the federal deficit, because the government was finally collecting enough tax revenue to fund what was needed. The relatively modest tax increase on wealthy individuals somehow accompanied years of strong growth. Future generations will have reason to be grateful -- the national debt would likely be around $12 trillion now, instead of $9 trillion-plus, if it hadn't been for those eight years.

One president we wouldn't likely get any meaningful change out of is John McCain. The leader of the Straitjacket Express appears to have sold out to the Bushies on economic issues. He's committed himself -- pardon the expression -- to the Bush tax smoocherama with the rich and Big Business, pledging to make Bush's bonanzas permanent.

An important thing to remember is that the division in the Democratic Party is going to have to end soon. We're at a critical juncture in the nation's history, and we simply can't afford any more Republican economic policies. We need voters to expand the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. And, we need a Democratic president -- yes, I know there are differences between the candidates, but one or the other will be essential -- to sign the bills.

The big word is November. I hope you can pay your mortgage until then.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Texas Update: No Two-Step For Gene Kelly

By Manifesto Joe

State Democratic Party regulars are no doubt sighing in relief. State Rep. Rick Noriega, D-Houston, is coming in with just under 51 percent of primary vote, winning the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff and be the nominee against Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Noriega has key endorsements and might actually stand a chance in November against Cornyn, a Bush shill and one of the Senate's most expendable members.

Meanwhile, Gene Kelly, perennial candidate for this or that (see previous post), will have to take his dance macabre home to Universal City, Texas. (He usually only left there to pay the filing fee, anyway.) Perhaps we've seen the last of the 81-year-old retired military lawyer. But it's not like Texans ever saw much of him. In nearly 20 years of seeking and never winning public office, Kelly rarely campaigned. Name recognition can only do just so much. Maybe if he'd changed his name to John Wayne and run as a Republican ...

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

What Happened In Texas ...

By Manifesto Joe

... was that Hispanics turned out. A whole lot of them. And they voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton.

It appears that El Paso put her over. She won that urban area by a ratio of over 2-to-1. That, and her strength in San Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, offset a big Obama vote in Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston and Austin.

I feel kind of bittersweet about the whole thing. There are things I like and dislike about both, but I am very ready to support whichever one is the nominee.

It seems there was a strong Obama vote among those who cast ballots early, and among those who made up their minds early. The more undecided people, and those who waited until yesterday to vote, went mostly for Hillary. The experience argument seemed to carry a lot of weight with those who decided late.

So, if you're wondering, how did I vote? I voted Democratic, as an early voter. My wife waited until yesterday, and she also voted Democratic. That's as much as you're going to get out of me right now.

You can get the exit-poll demographic breakdown here, at CNN.com.

Texas postscript: A second story is that perennial candidate Gene Kelly stands a chance to make a runoff for the Democratic U.S. senatorial nomination against state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston. This is one that probably won't be decided until much later today -- Noriega was hovering at around 50 percent of the vote, with Kelly a distant second.

Kelly has run for U.S. Senate three times, and actually got the Democratic nomination and the honor of getting clobbered in 2000 by GOP incumbent Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. He seldom campaigns. He's a retired military lawyer and judge, somewhere around 81 years old.

Observers have been trying to figure out how he's achieved this modest but noticeable level of success, and they figure it must be the name. "The dancer is dead," many party regulars are trying to tell the voters.

I can't help but think that if such a significant slice of the electorate is that stupid, then Rick Noriega's surname may not be helping him much.

Problem is, Kelly has actually done well enough to force the Texas Democratic Party into a couple of expensive runoffs. Keep your fingers crossed that he doesn't do it again. Here are a couple of links that tell more of the story: This one has the real info. This one is just for fun.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Bush Misadventures In Mideast Blinded Him To Troubles In Latin America

By Manifesto Joe

While the U.S. remains stuck in the Iraq quagmire, and Afghanistan looks increasingly like one, too, there's plenty of trouble simmering in our own back yard. The problems of Latin America have already changed the face of America forever -- and that may be just a warm-up, because now there's the faint odor of war.

Reuters reported Sunday from Caracas:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sent troops and tanks to the Colombian border and mobilized warplanes on Sunday, warning Bogota could spark a war after it bombed inside another of its neighbors, Ecuador.

Reacting to Colombia's killing on Saturday of a Colombian rebel over the border in Ecuador, a Venezuelan ally, Chavez also withdrew all of his diplomats from Bogota in the worst dispute between the neighbors since he came to office in 1999. ...

"May God spare us a war. But we are not going to allow them violate our sovereign territory," the ex-paratrooper said.

Colombia's troops killed Raul Reyes, a leader of Marxist FARC rebels, during an attack on a jungle camp in Ecuador in a severe blow to Latin America's oldest guerrilla insurgency. The operation included air strikes and fighting across the border.

The anti-U.S. Chavez, who had warned a similar operation in Venezuela would be "cause for war," threatened to send Russian-made fighter jets into U.S. ally Colombia if its troops also struck inside his OPEC country.

Eduador's president, Rafael Correa, also sent troops to the Colombian border and expelled Colombia's ambassador.

Some analysts viewed the moves as grandstanding by Chavez, who must realize that war with Colombia would bring serious repercussions to Venezuela's economy. But if war were to break out, the U.S., being allied with Colombia and having demonized Chavez for many years, would be in a real spot.

The official U.S. response sounded pretty lame. Reuters went on:

Washington, which backs Uribe's fight against the rebels with its largest military aid outside the Middle East, said it was monitoring developments after Chavez's "odd reaction."

At this point, the only real way George W. Bush can exert influence in Latin America is militarily, and his Iraq misadventure has made that option precarious to say the least. And, given the history of hostility toward Chavez, intervention down there could well turn into yet another quagmire that the American people can't afford.

The incident suggests U.S. vulnerability, and diminished influence, as part of the pathetic Bush legacy. Obsessed with Mideast adventures, Bush has left the U.S. looking a lot like the Richard Nixon metaphor of a "pitiful, helpless giant" when it comes to dealing with events on our own hemisphere.

Pablo Bachelet of McClatchy Newspapers posted a piece, "Bush Legacy: Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?", that is definitely worth a read. Bachelet, actually posting Saturday, the day before the troop movements were reported, wrote of Bush:

... his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.

He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.

I wouldn't exactly endorse some of the free-trade pacts referred to there. But at the core of the issues are the lack of serious U.S. political engagement in Latin America, and the inability to see how some economic rivals are making inroads in the region.

And the demonization of Chavez has proved costly. I have little doubt, judging from his actions, that Chavez is a power-monger (sorry, many fellow lefties). But the current administration has done plenty to antagonize him. There are conflicting accounts, but the U.S. government appears to have been, at the very least, willing to condone any success of the April 2002 coup attempt against him, had it been successful.

A bottom line here is that, whatever warts the man has, Chavez has won election after election in Venezuela, by wide margins. There haven't been credible challenges to the legitimacy of those elections. He didn't have to be appointed to the presidency by his country's high court. His popularity among common Venezuelans is beyond question, and so is his legitimacy as the nation's leader.

Normalization of relations with Venezuela would be a big step in the right direction. Chavez, I admit, makes me pretty nervous; but the U.S. fraternizes with anti-democratic strongmen who make me a lot more nervous. To wit, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is an ally. Chavez never will be, but I would say that with him, normalization of relations is a practical and desirable option.

It won't happen under a President McCain. It might under a President Obama, or a President Clinton. There's a lot of damage to be repaired, and we can pretty much assume that no Republican administration will do it.

Another starting point would be Cuba. Bachelet also wrote:

Some critics say changing the Cuba policy also will help. A new Cuba approach, says Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be a ''superb opening toward refurbishing'' the Latin America policy that he describes as "bordering on failure.''

In microcosmic terms, the U.S. has been hassling with folks across town, while the neighbors are about to start a shooting feud that we (in the editorial sense) helped start. It's time to come back to the neighborhood and rejoin the association.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

As Another Bill Rots In Subcommittee, U.S. Remains The World's Foremost Jailer

By Manifesto Joe

Although the trend is far from new, the U.S. did pass a milestone recently in its overall incarceration rate, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States. More than 1 in 100 American adults is either in prison or in jail. This is the largest prison/jail population in the world. Even far more populous China is a distant second, the report says. We're talking both numbers and per capita, going away.

The report puts the most current figure for U.S. incarcerated at 2,319,258. Of those, 171,790 are enjoying austere lodging in my home state of Texas.

The growth of the orange jump-suit set has attracted the attention of certain lawmakers. But predictably, change is coming very slowly, and one of the pertinent bills in the Congress is -- you guessed it, mired in a subcommittee.

At the federal level, one lawmaker who is trying to turn back an irrational trend is U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas. She's the sponsor of H.R. 261, the proposed Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007.

According to washingtonwatch.com, here's a description of the bill, and its status:

Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007 - Amends the federal criminal code to direct the Bureau of Prisons, pursuant to a good time policy, to release a prisoner who has served one half or more of his or her term of imprisonment if that prisoner: (1) has attained age 45; (2) has never been convicted of a crime of violence; and (3) has not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

Latest Major Action: 2/2/2007: Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Translation: It will be stuck there for quite a while. According to the Web site fantasycongress.com, it has no co-sponsors.

There are some other revealing statistics in the Pew report. About 1 in 9 black men aged 20 to 34 are in prison or jail, for just one example.

What happened? The report says that this is largely the result of tougher state and federal sentencing that began in the 1980s. Translation: The War on Drugs, and "Three Strikes, You're Out."

Jackson-Lee is fighting windmills for now, and only at the federal prison level at that. But this is a trend that cannot and will not continue much longer. The costs will see to that: The report says that in 20 years, state spending on corrections, adjusted for inflation, went up 127%; spending on higher education, 21%. State governments are paying nearly $50 billion a year to prop up this quasi-gulag. The federal government is paying more than $5 billion annually.

"Lock 'em up" has always played well with much of the electorate -- I will risk saying the more ignorant part of it -- but alternatives to prison must be explored, especially where the disastrous War on Drugs is concerned. The hoosegows are so full that I think it's time to refocus on offenders who have actually injured someone else, arbitrarily and directly, rather than some schmuck who gets caught with a user's amount of a controlled substance. We've done the hard-ass approach for a generation, and it has obviously run its course.

If you ever write to your representatives in Congress, it might be a good time to mention H.R. 261, since this problem is in the news.

And, I will leave you all with a link to a fine post on this subject that, among other things, also explores the disturbing trend of outsourcing incarceration to contractors. These companies operate "private" prisons that maximize profits through varied abuse, deprivation and frighteningly unsanitary conditions.

You'll find a lot more at The Existentialist Cowboy.

Be joyful that you are free -- if you more or less are.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Buckley Lived To See Dream Fulfilled, But For Many It's A Nightmare

By Manifesto Joe

The obituary du jour has been that of William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) He was a mercurial sort who gave differing impressions to many people. And, in later years, even old foes like Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut seemed to have some personal liking for the man.

But let's remember a few things:

-- National Review was openly opposed to integration during the heyday of the civil rights movement. That went on for many years, and has been ignored in the obits by most of the MSM.

-- As a cultural commentator, he tended to shoot prejudicially, straight from the hip, as conservatives are apt to. He pronounced the Beatles so bad that they should be crowned as monarchs of anti-music. He probably wrote that after hearing just one of their less-refined early songs. I'd say that after about four LPs, the world had pretty much agreed that the Fab Four were a phenomenon. But, being Bill Buckley meant never having to say you were wrong about anything.

-- Go to YouTube and dig up that 1968 exchange with Gore Vidal at the Chicago Democratic Convention. That should clear up any inner-child notion of Buckley as a warm/fuzzy. Vidal said that after the on-camera clash, Buckley approached him and said something like, you're going to be sorry for this. Vidal told him, "Do your worst." Vidal was a little too big by then to be "blacklisted" a second time, but I'd say he and a few others like Noam Chomsky are still on sort of an MSM graylist. (But I'm sure Buckley had nothing at all to do with that.)

-- I recall one-time Goldwater speechwriter Karl Hess, in a 1976 Playboy interview, talking about his split with the mainstream conservative movement. Per Buckley's emphasis on the importance of recognizing achievements of superior individuals, Hess said something like, hell, Bill IS superior. Why shouldn't he be? He always got the best food and the finest education money could buy, largely from private tutors. He didn't grow up in a ghetto eating bad, undernourishing food, so that his brain failed to develop into the organ it should have. He never went to an inner-city school. Of course Bill is superior ... Why shouldn't he be?

I confess having fallen under the spell of Buckley Junior for a time as a teenager, lured into that den of iniquity that is libertarian conservatism. I read Up From Liberalism (1959), and was sadly hooked and deluded for a while during the early '70s.

It took a few years, but in time, I realized that the only thing that had made it possible for me to EAT for a while as a child, let alone go to college later, was the FDR- and LBJ-spawned welfare state that Buckley Junior so despised and devoted his life to destroying.

And, he lived to see his dream of conservative dominance come true. Let us look over this wasteland -- as a great deal less than lords of all we survey, Bill's ghost.

After nearly 30 years of this ideology's ascendancy, we're in two costly wars without apparent end, and one of them was absolutely unnecessary. (You even admitted that about one of them before you died. My God, let's mark that one.) The annual deficit is approaching half a trillion, and the cumulative national debt is over $9 trillion. We have a federal government that is encroaching on our rights and privacy more each day, and is engaged in Nazi-like torture of anyone suspected of being an enemy.

Our infrastructure is slowly crumbling. Income inequality is the greatest it has been in 80 years. "Free trade" agreements have shipped millions of American jobs overseas. Big corporations and Wall Street types have made off with anything that wasn't nailed down, thanks to deregulation. Home foreclosures have reached alarming levels. Dependence on crude oil that went on decades after it was clearly unwise is menacing not only the U.S. economy, but the whole planet.

I hope that if God is there, and indeed forgives arrogant sinners -- as Buckley's Roman Catholicism asserts -- that the first words out of Buckley's mouth after his passing on were, "Jesus, You're a liberal?"

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Postscript: Here is Buckley vs. Vidal, Aug. 28, 1968:

Bush Not Only Clueless About Economy, But Infrastructure, Too

By Manifesto Joe

One can rely on Il Doofus to rebuff godless socialism in all its insidious forms. He blocked the relentless creeping of that menace Monday during a White House meeting with a group of the nation's governors.

A bipartisan group of governors urged GWB to increase spending on roads, bridges and other public works as, among other things, an economic stimulus. His reaction was described as cool, something to the effect that he would rather see how his recently enacted tax rebate stimulus is going to work.

Dana Perino, White House press secretary and economist extraordinaire, is reported to have said, "There's no short-term stimulus to the economy for some of these projects."

First and foremost, no new taxes. This from a report in The New York Times:

Moreover, Ms. Perino said, the president will not accept any bill that raises taxes to finance such projects. Governors would have more money available, she said, if Congress ended the wasteful earmarking of billions of dollars for specific projects.

In a report on Monday, the National Association for Business Economics, a professional group, said, "Economic growth is expected to slow to a crawl in the first half of 2008."

Asked about the president's response, Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, said: "I think I can summarize his remarks best by saying he did not think he would be interested. He wants to see the results of the stimulus package that was just passed."

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat who is vice chairman of the National Governors Association, described the response as "a fairly significant no."

"There are tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure projects ready to go," Mr. Rendell said. "I asked the president if he would support spending on those projects as part of a second stimulus package, and he said no."

Other governors pushing for spending on transportation projects include Jon Corzine of New Jersey, a Democrat; Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican; Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican; and Eliot Spitzer of New York, a Democrat.

After the cool reception at the White House, governors said they would take their proposals to Congress.

First, I'll pose something: Il Doofus doesn't realize that the U.S. economy needs more than just short-term stimulus, regardless of how quickly public works projects would have an effect. We're in long-term trouble, and federal income taxes are indeed going to have to go up in certain brackets. Two and two simply don't add up to five. You can't fight elective wars and engage in expensive nation-building abroad, while running record deficits and giving out big tax breaks at home. It was Il Doofus' game that got us here; it's time to change direction.

There are people on the right who dismiss public works projects as shovel-leaning make-work, arguing that the U.S. stayed mired in the Great Depression for years after such programs were enacted. The New Deal, they argue, didn't ultimately lift the U.S. out of the Depression -- World War II did.

That is true -- and it is a validation of the New Deal, not a repudiation of it. The war empowered the federal government to do things that an obstructionist Supreme Court and a tentative Congress wouldn't let FDR do several years earlier. The country actually became semi-socialist during World War II. No new automobiles were built for four years, because the Detroit factories were, de facto, commandeered for the war effort. Government defense spending surged, and jobs came with that. Needless to say, federal income tax rates on the wealthy weren't low. There was genuinely shared sacrifice. War isn't the best way for this to happen. But it demonstrated the short-term power of government to lift an economy out of a depression.

Then, there's the infrastructure to consider. It seems that the Minneapolis bridge collapse was quickly forgotten in other parts of the country. Our bridges and other infrastructure are in serious decline after decades of neglect. Federal public works spending seems very much in order now.

I'll bring up a personal point, going back 70 years, a biblical lifetime. In 1938, one of my two grandfathers had been forced to abandon farming amid an epic depression and the Dust Bowl. He had superior carpentry skills, but there was little work in that field. He didn't think it was a good idea to take the family to the Bakersfield, California, area and pick fruit for subsistence, a la Tom Joad.

Despite being a lifelong Republican, he took a job with the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He spent about a year assembling commodes. The pay wasn't good, but it was enough to bring home some hamburger meat or chicken once a week, for a change of pace from the standard beans and cornbread.

A crucial point is that here in Texas, we are still driving safely over some of those bridges built during the WPA era. I would speculate that there are still people taking dumps on a few of the commodes that my grandfather assembled. And, during the time he had to do a WPA job, his family ate. Government can make a difference -- and infrastructure matters.

But, we have a government that is philosophically opposed to any such thing. The approach is very different, and tends to benefit only certain people. More from The Times:

In an effort to avert a recession, Mr. Bush recently signed a $168 billion measure to provide tax rebates to encourage consumer spending and to offer new tax incentives for businesses to buy equipment.

Brian G. Turmail, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said highway spending was not an effective way to stimulate the economy because "it takes too long to get the money into projects."

Rather than asking for an increase in federal highway spending, Mr. Turmail said, governors should seek additional money from the private sector, including pension funds and investment banking concerns. ...

Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters told governors, "The federal role in transportation should be more limited than it is today," and should focus on the Interstate and Defense Highway System and traffic congestion in major metropolitan regions.

They're really on top of things, aren't they?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

More Weekend Jazz, From Nicola Conte

Internet radio is introducing me to music I didn't realize was out there. Here's a supercool piece from Italian acid jazz/bossa nova artist Nicola Conte, called Bossa Per Due:



Wait, there's more. Here's music from Nicola Conte's combo, live from Blue Note Milano:



Ciao, all. -- MJ

A Real Bush Presidential Library Could Probably Be Packed Into A Phone Booth

By Manifesto Joe

(And there would be a lot of magazines ...) Today, trustees of Southern Methodist University in Dallas (first lady Laura Bush's alma mater) are expected to approve a long-negotiated deal to locate the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus.

They actually faced some opposition among clergy members of the United Methodist Church, who seemed to think that some of the Bush administration's policies are quite at odds with UMC world views. You know, like, insufficiently Christian. (Translation to Southern Baptists: "Them godless lib'ruls") Strange, I can remember when Methodists were considered a mod/con denomination. Times have changed.

But, this approval is inevitable, so Dallas and SMU will host the "Bush Library." I suppose there are going be enough documents and artifacts to fill the plush, roomy digs they are going to build.

Too bad they won't have some of the mangled Humvees, vacant foreclosed homes and photos of disabled people, dying before they can even qualify for disability, on display.

An irony is that this president, from all accounts, isn't much of a reader. He's not alone on that score. Ronald Reagan was known for his love of Louis L'Amour novels. Beyond that, he didn't like to read much. Bush has, at times, allegedly been given some damned reading list that actually included stuff like Albert Camus' The Stranger.

He probably got off on the idea of offing an A-Rab on the beach. And, knowing the history, if he had actually become acquainted with Albert Camus, he would doubtlessly have called him "Bert" and would have mispronounced his last name. It would have come out something like the dude who once played shortstop for the old Kansas City Athletics.

I suppose they have to put Bush's library somewhere, so as to have some Texas repository host all the documented horror inflicted on the nation for eight years. If it were up to me, I would have recommended Midland Community College, or whatever they have out there, and put it in a corrugated metal building somewhere in the vocational trades area.

SMU minority, message: I feel your pain.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

When It Comes Down To Texas, That's Scary

By Manifesto Joe

Texas still suffers from longstanding stereotypes, and perhaps our state deserves it. We're a lot more complex than the national media depict; but I would admit that we haven't generally done a lot to disprove the images that a person in, say, Vermont, would tend to have of us. Now it looks like we, of all states, may be the one that determines the next Democratic nominee, and the next president.

I don't know how Vermont residents feel, but that thought frightens me enough that I'm still undecided.

Texas? Well, it's a place that used to be the world's official capital of chauvinism, and that remains an influence that's still covertly in control. Don't delude yourself into thinking the reason you almost have to speak Spanish to order in a restaurant here now, even a Wendy's, was a result of social tolerance. Boys and girls, can you spell cheap-ass labor?

There are reasons why there are jokes like this: What does a young woman in Texas say while she's losing her virginity? Answer: "Git off, Daddy. Yore crushin' my cigarettes."

OK, so we aren't the most advanced sub-society in America. The odds of someone, picked off the streets of Houston, having read any Bertrand Russell, ever, are infinitesimal. We're very underrepresented among the states in top universities and liberal arts colleges, and that's no accident. Even our rich people, often the progeny of semiliterate wildcatters, are pseudo-cultured poseurs who put on too much bad cologne before attending a Van Cliburn performance.

But our state was quite an outpost of human individuality and toughness before the discovery of oil spoiled so many people. And recently, we've become much more complex than many of our American brethren realize.

I have the distinction of counting myself as an old-school Texan, having had three of four grandparents born here, and all of their parents as well (with a little Cherokee Indian mixed in). We're those South Plains types who, linguists say, contributed to the American language in some elaborate and creative ways, with words like "discombobulated."

And then, there's the melding of English and Spanish that was inevitable in a place like this. "Vamoose," from the old Westerns, was simply hillbilly butchery of vamos (let's go)

I think the melding of the food styles turned out much better on the whole.

But, on to the main point: The modern, urbanized Texas has potential that is often unrealized:

-- Travis County, where our capital of Austin is, went for John Kerry in 2004.

-- Dallas County split pretty closely in Bush vs. Kerry. And, the Dallas County district attorney, Craig Watkins, is a Democrat and an African-American. And he's doing a job that is making a lot of people downright proud.

-- We have somehow produced a number of the U.S. progressive movement's finest, among them the late great Molly Ivins, our former Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, and others.

We have emerged as arguably the biggest American melting pot, and perhaps it is appropriate that we should be the deciding state to determine the Democratic nominee.

I'll be watching what happens in the Austin debate on Thursday night, because I'm genuinely undecided. I have likes and dislikes regarding both Clinton and Obama. But I'm a Democrat -- Ronald Reagan stirred me there, and George W. Bush cemented me -- so I'm for whichever one of the Democrats wins.

I hope my fellow Texans choose wisely. Yee-haa; y vamos, muchachos y muchachas. A todos mis amigos: Vote Democratic.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Spitzer's "Crack Tax" Sounds Goofy, But Can We Do Worse?

By Manifesto Joe

The latest odd notion from an elected official in the War on Drugs has ruffled fur across the spectrum. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, facing a $4.4 billion budget shortfall, has proposed levying a tax on drug dealers' illegal stashes.

Taxing something illegal does entail a certain absurdity. But the War on Drugs reached absurd proportions many years ago. Given the broader history, I'm not sure why this scheme has gotten all these raspberries, from so many sides.

The bigger picture is that the War on Drugs is the domestic Vietnam. It's a war that was lost many years ago, but the main combatants won't surrender. The saddest aspect has been the failure to recognize fundamental human nature: Sobriety seems, in the final analysis, just a bit overrated. Successful societies recognize this and modestly go about finding ways to manage things, keeping most people sober for crucial work, and refraining from ill-fated moral crusades.

On to the proposal. The Washington Post reports that:

The new tax would apply to cocaine, heroin and marijuana, and could be paid with pre-bought "tax stamps" affixed to the bags of dope.

It didn't take WaPo long to lapse into borderline editorializing. In the second paragraph of the online story, the reporter wrote:

Some critics in the legislature are asking what the governor has been smoking.

Yes, there are plenty of critics of this idea, so let's go over the spectrum.

Republican state Sen. Martin J. Golden was reported as the wag who dubbed the proposal "the crack tax." WaPo went on to report: Some opponents said that because cocaine and weed would be subject to the new levies, it should more aptly be called "the crack-pot tax."

The conservative side of the aisle also says this would lend a perverse legitimacy to illegal drugs. Making them taxable would have them seem comparable to the legally condoned vices of alcohol and tobacco.

And the criticism isn't limited to Republican adversaries of Democrat Spitzer. The WaPo report goes on:

On the other side of the aisle, some Democrats, too, were stunned by the plan. "My initial instinct is: I don't understand it," said Bill Perkins, a state senator from Harlem. "Most of the dealers I'm familiar with are petty crack dealers -- most of them are crackheads. They are broke, to say the least. I just don't understand how you impose a tax" on broke crackheads, he said.

Taxing illegal drugs is more widespread than is generally known. At least 21 states have some form of tax for illicit drugs, although some of those laws have been challenged in courts, and others have fallen into disuse. Almost all the remaining drug-tax laws are used mainly by local law enforcement agencies as a way to seize drug money and fund counter-narcotics operations.

The controversial idea grew out of the efforts to fight bootleggers such as Al Capone during Prohibition -- going after the bootleggers for unpaid taxes often required a lighter burden of proof than a criminal prosecution. Taxing illicit drugs gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s, when prosecutors and law enforcement authorities were pushing for mandatory sentences and other measures to signal a crackdown on drugs and drug use.

By the way, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws thinks it's a dumb notion, too. WaPo said that Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, called it "a wacky idea. It's a quintessential example of the absurdity of the war on some drugs."

How could this actually work? After the arrests: More from WaPo:

Most states with the law sell stamps that drug dealers can buy in advance, like what Spitzer is proposing. Because no drug dealers are known to buy the stamps and pay their tax in advance, the tax is usually levied after they are caught.

Some states have designed distinctive drug stamps, often depicting a marijuana leaf. Nebraska's drug stamp depicts a rolled joint crossed with a syringe in front of a skull and what appears to be a headstone, with the label "R.I.P."

Most of the folks who buy these stamps up Nebraska way are said to be likely stamp collectors.

Yeah, it really seems like a pretty silly idea. But it's just one more in a long line of them.

The War on Drugs has been going on, officially, since around 1970. I recall being subjected to a half-year of propaganda for an entire class period during high school; and the semester ended with perhaps the smartest kid at our school, a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist, getting busted for possession of a joint.

The '70s era seems like ancient history to many, a time when pot was the substance of choice and few had heard of anything resembling crack cocaine. The latter took hold of the streets of America in the '80s, and attitudes understandably changed. But the draconian response did perhaps more long-term damage than good.

This is from the Alaska Justice Forum, Spring 2000:

The “war on drugs” has led to an enormous increase in both the numbers and percentages of inmates in the federal system incarcerated primarily for drug offenses ...

The inmate population sentenced for drug offenses is now almost 60 per cent of the total federal inmate population. Between 1985 and 1998 the number of federal inmates sentenced for drug charges grew by nearly 500 per cent.

Here's more from drugwarfacts.org:

State prisons held a total of 1,274,600 inmates on all charges at yearend 2004. In absolute numbers an estimated 633,700 inmates in State prison at yearend 2004 (the latest year for which offense data is available) were held for violent offenses: 151,500 for murder, 178,900 for robbery, 129,400 for assault, and 153,800 for rape and other sexual assaults. In addition, 265,600 inmates were held for property offenses, 249,400 for drug offenses, and 88,900 for public-order offenses.

Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007), NCJ219416, p. 24, Appendix Table 9.

Federal prisons were estimated to hold 176,268 sentenced inmates as of Sept. 30, 2006. Of these, 16,507 were incarcerated for violent offenses, including 2,923 for homicide, 9,645 for robbery, and 3,939 for other violent crimes. In addition, 10,015 inmates were serving time for property crimes, including 519 for burglary, 6,437 for fraud, and 3,059 for other property offenses. A total of 93,751 were incarcerated for drug offenses. Also, 54,336 were incarcerated for public-order offenses, incluging 19,496 for immigration offenses and 24,298 for weapons offenses.

Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007), NCJ219416, p. 26, Appendix Table 13.

The War on Drugs, as it has been fought for about 38 years, has overcrowded prisons and jails at all levels; raised taxes enough to seriously burden most Americans; and has actually done relatively little to stem the use of illegal drugs, considering the penalties some can face. If we wanted to get really draconian, I suppose we could start executing drug dealers as they do in certain Mideast countries, most notably Saudi Arabia. And maybe we could start severing the hands of thieves while we're at it.

But if I wanted solutions like that, I would have emigrated long ago. This is the U.S., and, last time I checked, we had a Bill of Rights.

Spitzer's idea seems no sillier than others we've been hearing for going on four decades. At least in his scheme, mainstream society might actually collect a bit of quid from the underground economy.

There's a bottom line: People like to get high. They have always liked to get high. They have been getting high, on one substance or another, since antiquity. Granted, this is an indulgence that functioning societies the world over have always found it necessary to control. People cannot be permitted to perform certain tasks while high -- and there are certain substances that are far worse than others, and they require sterner measures to achieve the desired control.

But, "a drug-free society," as was trumpeted in public-service ads during the '80s, is a Puritan fantasy. There will never be one. Anywhere. Ever. The rational response to a social problem from this, when it presents itself, is management -- drug education, humane treatment for addicts, alternatives to incarceration, and yes -- even legalization of certain substances. The 18th Amendment (prohibition of alcohol) in the U.S. was a joke, and after about 14 years of it, even people in predominantly Mormon Utah were forced to admit that. They were the last required state to ratify repeal. Tobacco is becoming increasingly taboo in mainstream life, but I wouldn't predict that it will ever go away. (How will I score my occasional Punch Rothchild cigars?)

Marijuana, I admit to having had considerable experience with, many years ago. In 1978, I wouldn't have believed anyone who told me the stuff would still be illegal the way it is now, 30 years later. It's not a harmless drug -- there are none of those, not even pharmaceuticals. But we have enough collective societal experience with this substance now to know that it's probably no worse than too much Jagermeister. It's a matter of how it's used.

But sadly, irrational beliefs can linger for generations. (The Republican Party has built its very profitable chain of stores on that fact.)

Anyway, when you find yourself deep in a hole, the best strategy seems to be to stop digging. Spitzer's idea doesn't seem any sillier than what we've been doing for decades. It's time to rethink the whole thing. At least he seems to be thinking -- not enough, but just a bit -- outside a very constricting box.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

It's About Time, You Bums: House Dems Finally Stand Up On Attorney Firings

By Manifesto Joe

Some of us have been waiting far too long for something like this to finally happen, given that we have an executive branch that flouts the law and even exhibits utter contempt for it.

The Associated Press reports: The House voted Thursday to hold two of President Bush's confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated.

Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout.

So the crybabies gathered up their marbles and left. More is coming on why they said they did that.

The vote was 223-32 to hold White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt. The citations charge Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Bolten of refusing Congress' demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 firings.

What Republicans said Democrats should be doing instead was on extending a law, scheduled to expire tomorrow, allowing the government to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails in the U.S. in cases of suspected terrorist activity. More from AP:

"We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us," said Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio.

"Let's just get up and leave," he told his colleagues, before storming out of the House chamber with scores of Republicans in tow.

The vote, which Democrats had been threatening for months, was the latest wrinkle in a more than yearlong constitutional clash between Congress and the White House. The administration says the information being sought is off-limits under executive privilege, and argues that Bolten and Miers are immune from prosecution.

It's high damned time a vote was finally held, instead of just more seemingly empty threats aired. Instead of granting ever more power to a dangerous executive branch, now's the time to cut these well-tailored hooligans down to size. A bit more from AP:

If Congress didn't enforce the subpoenas, said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, it would "be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial presidency, above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances."

The White House said the Justice Department would not ask the U.S. attorney to pursue the House contempt charges. However, the measure would allow the House to bring its own lawsuit on the matter.

At best, Boehner and other Republicans behaved like myopic hypocrites, and at worst, like saboteurs of any semblance of checks and balances. The Bush administration wave of U.S. attorney firings was partisan political hackery at its worst, and cost one Cabinet member his job. (Remember Fredo?) The least that could have been expected was for the other hacks to comply with the subpoenas.

Now let's see if the House Democrats actually file the lawsuits. And how about impeaching Cheney, while they're on a small roll?

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Rebates, Pronto; Now What About Social Security Fairness?

By Manifesto Joe

When it came to those federal income tax rebates, everybody on Capitol Hill has moved pretty quickly. I'm sure it has nothing to do with this being an election year. But what does one make of a situation in which a bill has 334 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, but after years of introductions and reintroductions, it's never gone to the floor for a vote?

In July I posted about the proposed Social Security Fairness Act of 2007. For those unfamiliar -- well, you're lucky, for one thing. My wife, and my mother, both former civil servants, aren't so fortunate. But you'll need the background. This is from the July post:

Two of the most insidious things ever done to large numbers of Americans were done way back in 1977 and 1983. In '77, Congress passed the Government Pension Offset, which slashed the amount of Social Security benefits people receive when their spouses are on the Civil Service Retirement System. The cut was two-thirds of the amount of the government pension.

Then, in '83, there was the Windfall Elimination Provision. This directly cut Social Security benefits for CSRS retirees who mostly worked for government entities but also spent part of their working lives in the private sector, covered by Social Security.

And, this doesn't just affect those who worked for the federal government. These reductions also apply to those who worked for state and local governments, by formula.

"You will get something," one reads upon investigation of the Social Security Web site. Yep, we know how that is. It hurts worst the first time.

Not much has happened since July. Or since the year before that, and the year before that. ...

A hearing on the Senate version, S. 206, was held Nov. 6 by the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Kerry is one of 35 co-sponsors in the Senate -- it's strange how much smaller the proportion of co-sponsors is in that body.

Texas AFT (American Federation of Teachers) reported on the hearing:

Witnesses at today's hearing did a good job of stressing that these offsets cut fully EARNED benefits--either earned by an employee's own work in other jobs covered by Social Security or earned by a spouse who was in covered employment. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who is a principal coauthor of the Fairness Act (S. 206), told the story of teacher Julie Worcester, who worked in jobs covered by Social Security for 20 years, then at age 49 went to college to become a teacher and taught for 15 years, until age 68. Mrs. Worcester was subject to the Windfall Elimination Provision, depriving her of much of her earned Social Security pension because she also gets a public pension for serving as a teacher in Maine. The bottom line is that she receives less than $160 from Social Security each month, her total retirement income is $800 a month--and she can't live on that, so at age 78 she is still working part-time as a substitute teacher.

Expert witnesses from the U.S. Government Accountability Office and a Washington think tank gave the usual justifications for the two offsets, essentially boiling down to the claim that they are designed to keep higher-wage employees from reaping a "windfall" when they retire. But Sen. Kerry and other witnesses noted that the offsets in practice are indiscriminate, doing particular harm to employees with low incomes.

Sen. Kerry also made another point that deserves more attention. Kerry said these offsets "penalize people who are making a good choice about how to retire decently in this country, and that's getting harder to do." Members of Congress are "pretty good at taking care of our own health care, pensions, and benefits," he continued, and they "ought to be bending over backward to empower people" to secure a decent retirement income, through a combination of Social Security and a pension from public employment, instead of punishing them for doing so.

What has happened since? More from Texas AFT:

The Fairness Act until now has been blocked session after session by House leaders adamantly opposed to its passage. But those leaders were swept out of office in 2006, and now both the House and Senate are headed by past co-sponsors of the Fairness Act, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada--both hailing from states with large populations of public employees adversely affected by the two unfair offsets. So the outlook for action on the fairness agenda looks brighter in the current Congress. A hearing has already been held in the U.S. Senate on repeal of the GPO and WEP, and a hearing has been promised in the U.S. House Social Security Subcommittee as well for early 2008

We're still waiting to "hear" something about that hearing. Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y, the ever-mercurial chairman of House Ways and Means, has promised it will be held and issued a verbose statement of support, of which I will spare you. That's where we are now.

On washingtonwatch.com, there have been 162 comments on the Senate version alone. Here are just a few off the top:

Joan Sullivent
I am 66 y/o retired Civil Servant with both WEP offset and full GPO offset. My own Social Security benefit is just barely more than my Medicare premium. I have to work part time job just to survive. The passing of this bill would allow me to actually retire!

Diane Cordell
I am soon to retire and subject to the GPO and WEP. Having spent 15 years as a homemaker, now divorced, my spousal benefits are not available to me. I entered the workforce in my 40s with a high school education. Needless to say my403b will provide a minimal retirement income. the passage of this bill would give me the SS benefits I have earned.

Barbara Smith
Please support the Social Security Fairness Act H. R 82.

I am an older teacher who returned to the classroom 10 years ago. I now get Social Security of about $800 per month. If I retire from teaching I will loose my SS and get only CA teacher's retirement of around $1000 per month I do not think it is fair to eliminate my SS.

I am penalized by returning to teaching. If my husband should die, I will no longer be eligible for his larger amount of SS. I know of several other teachers with the same problem.

William Reid
I am a recently-retired postal worker with over 30 years of service. I paid enough into social security (40 quarters) to qualify for benefits. However, because I retired under the old CSRS system, I will be robbed of over 60 percent of my SS benefits under the windfall offset law. Now, there is talk on Capitol Hill of providing SS benefits to illegal aliens. Can any of you congressmen imagine how disenfranchising it is to hear of such propals when we older American citizens cannot collect the SS benefits that we rightfully earned? Don't we American workers deserve the same consideration as the immigrants who enter our country illegally?

It was interesting to watch how quickly Congress has been moving on a tax rebate plan that will cost $145 billion. But then, some are worried about paying retired civil servants all that they have earned, so they can actually retire, and still buy groceries and clothes, gas, and so forth?

I suppose that's why they call it politics. To sort of paraphrase Clemenceau, that's all the more reason why it's too important to be left to the politicians.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Weekend Bop, Grassroots-Style

I was actually looking on YouTube for a video of the great Horace Silver (1928- ) playing this Latin-flavored piece, but there wasn't one. But I ran across these dudes in a grassroots jazz quintet in Kenmore, WA, and decided they aren't bad at all. Check out their rendition of Song For My Father:



If you want to hear Horace Silver and Joe Henderson do it, it's on a 1964 Blue Note album. The song is the album's title.

But, these amateurs(?) -- no, they're better than that -- are very OK, in my opinion. It gives me hope for grassroots music preservation. -- MJ

Public May Be Ahead Of Candidates On Medical Marijuana

By Manifesto Joe

Testifying before Congress last summer, the chief scientist in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Dr. David Murray, reportedly said that the medical use of marijuana had sparked violence and robberies in California.

I suppose I've seen too many silly old movies like Reefer Madness. I envisioned, in grainy black and white, wild-eyed, pot-crazed cancer patients, knocking over convenience stores to get at the Milk Duds stash.

More seriously, this season's leading Republican presidential candidates seem to be toeing the White House line on this issue. The Democrats, characteristically, have been more open-minded. But they all seem to be trailing the American public.

As long ago as 2002, a Time/CNN survey found that 80 percent of Americans support the use of marijuana as medicine. And in the same survey, 72 percent said nonmedicinal users should be fined, not thrown in the hoosegow. In other words, they favored decriminalization.

Here's a video sampling of what some of the candidates, current and former, have said about medical marijuana.

From Barack Obama, who admits having inhaled his share as a young man:



From Mitt Romney, evasion and swill:



Here's Hillary Clinton. At least she answered the question:



Now John McCain. He makes one thing perfectly clear -- he's opposed to incarcerating the dead:



This from recent dropout John Edwards. Even with some problems, I'm sad he's not still in the running:



Last, but not least, heeeere's Ron Paul. True to 19th-century American values, he's for states' rights on the issue:



That's all we have time for today, folks. Until next time, 2012, don't get diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.