Jack Sparks has been posting a list of top country songs... HIS version, to counter that lame-ass countdown that the Country Music Channel is or was doing (it's hard to tune in to that station for long enough to determine exactly what's on.)
Shania Twain is the single most damaging thing ever to happen to Country Music. She is NOT talented, She is NOT dynamic, She is NOT important, She is NOT fun. She is a robot. She's just a pretty face in a pink halter top and cowboy hat looking for her next check. She has dragged the music I love into the gutter of "what sells must be what is." These people live in a fucking palace in Switzerland. Last time I checked, June Carter Cash died at home on the farm motherfucker. If you like that boyband, canned bullshit, then you were probably all broken up when Rob and Fab turned out to be fakes too. Fuck. How long, Oh Lord, how long?
The headline in the SP Times reads Does your water taste strange?, and the article is a good followup on what I wrote here yesterday (see below). Funny, but the water that Perrier is stealing from our community and bottling and selling as Zephyrhills brand doesn’t seem to have any quality problems. Why do we put up with shit (thinks about it: there is literally poop mixing with our water) in our tap water while letting a multinational behemoth steal our good stuff?
The drinking water in parts of Hillsborough County may taste a bit different soon, and there's a good reason.
Hillsborough's drinking water supply flunked tests for bacteria in May, but authorities didn't deem the situation serious enough to immediately alert county residents.
The same thing happened in October. Back then, county officials launched an investigation. Now they're taking stronger measures, increasing the amount of disinfectant in the water.
"There's no health risk associated with the disinfectant. It just means your water may smell more like chlorine or taste different," said Celine Hyer, engineering manager for the Hillsborough County Water Department. "It should help kill off any stray bacteria."
Mucicipalities in Florida routinely inject toxic sludge deep underground. Unfortunately, some of this crap is mixing with fresh drinking water supplies, which is against the law.
Officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency were in Tampa on Wednesday to get public opinion about a controversial proposal to relax those rules and allow what's called deep-well injection of sewage to continue, even if the treated effluent is mixing with drinking water.
Remember: the easiest way to fix a problem is to change the rules so that it is no longer defined as a problem. And don’t worry: a wedge of lime will nicely cover up that slight taste of turd, though you might want to strain the solids out just to be safe.
From today's News Dissector Web Log:
FCC BATTLE STILL RAGES: CALL TO PRESSURE CONGRESS Common Cause is seeking to mobilize pressure on Congress: "Last Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee responded to the call to overturn the FCC decision. It took the first step by approving Senate Bill S.1046, and added several amendments, including one addressing the consolidation of radio that, if approved and passed into law, could address the creation of a more independent and less monopolized media. You answered our cry to upend the FCC and flooded the Senate with messages and we won this first step. We'll keep you informed as the legislation moves through the full Senate after the July 4 recess. But right now, we need your help to build momentum in the House. Please urge your Representative to listen to the American people by supporting legislation similar to S.1046. Contact your representative in the House by clicking here: http://causenet.commoncause.org/afr/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=2651106
Common cause adds: "Whatever the end result of the legislation approved by the Senate Commerce Committee, a new era has begun. More than ever, the American public is aware that a diverse and independent media is integral to a healthy democracy."
Elaine Cassel writes today of a U.S. Judge who is fed up with the system:
Martin is particularly bitter about drug sentencing laws. For drug offenses, according to recent data, account for about 60 % of federal prisoners. It is the harsh punishment for drug use and addiction that has driven up our incarceration rate to over 2 million men and women. We incarcerate more people for more crimes than any other country in the world.
And the sentencing is in the hands of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, behold to Congress, beholden to the President. Politics as usual.
The last straw for Martin came earlier this year when tucked into the Amber Alert legislation was a requirement that federal judges who deviate from the sentencing guidelines must report themselves to John Ashcroft.
And heavens know where that is going; it seems as if the errant judges are to be seen as naughty children who must report to their authoritarian father and await their punishment. You can't obey John and at the same time use common sense or demonstrate compassion and decency. For all John's talk of Christianity, he is one mean man when it comes to the weaknesses and suffering of others.
Watch your ass. If they don’t get you for "supporting terrorists" through your recreational drug use, Ashcroft and his cronies will just find some other way. Unless you’re a white Christian (in name, not necessarily in action) Republican war mongering fascist. In that case, your probably safe, at least for a while.
The State of Florida has decided to spend $750,000 on an ad campaign warning Floridians not to purchase prescription drugs from Canada. According to the SP Times:
Canadian pharmacies can sell some of the drugs most commonly used by Americans at 30 percent to 50 percent less, as a national health care plan covers its 33-million citizens and the government negotiates bulk medication prices.
So, in this country, not only do we not have a national health plan, our government is so concerned with protecting the profits of drug companies that it doesn’t even want its citizens to get a good deal on medicine?
Canada’s plan should be held up as a model for us. The only practical way for most people to be insured in the US is to be lucky enough to be employed by a company that offers insurance benefits. Health insurance is overly expensive, patients are treated badly, often you can not see the doctor you want to, and HMOs are paying their executives overly generous salaries while raping us for huge profits. Why don’t we try something different, something that is already proven to work?
As for those drug company profits, the drug companies say they have to make back the money they spend on R&D, but their R&D is so heavily subsidized by the Feds that they are, as a group, among the largest recipients of corporate welfare. The U.S. gives them money to help develop new drugs, or the U.S. simply turns years of government research over to them, thus doing the R&D for them. The companies are then allowed to patent “their” discoveries and sell the new meds for exorbitant prices. We know the prices are exorbitant, because in countries like Canada, the same drugs are much much cheaper.
If you don’t think the system is broken, ponder this: the sicker you are, and the sicker you remain, the more money your doctor makes. There is no financial incentive for a doctor to cure you. In fact, there is every incentive for a doctor to keep finding little ailments that require prescription meds (doctors are paid by drug companies to push their products) and followup visits.
David Lindorf noticed, like I did , that the NY Times was being a little wimpish in their week in review last weekend:
Thousands of people have died and continue to die because of these distortions, in the case of the war in Iraq. Millions will end up losing vital services because of the lies about the tax cut. This administration's lies about health policy, education policy, about environmental policy, about labor policy, about its judicial appointments, about communications regulatory policy, business regulatory policy, etc., etc., will have profound negative consequences on the lives of tens of millions of real people.
None, or little, of this, has been or will be subject to any real democratic debate.
But don't blame the White House, though. If is, after all, true that there is nothing new, except perhaps in terms of quantity and audacity, about the Bush administration's lies.
What's new is the acquiescence of the media in the lies and distortions by government.
Clink the link above for the whole article.
CounterPunch has lots of great articles, updated daily.
Paul Krugman in a NY Times piece titled Denial and Deception is coming right out and saying that Bush lied. I wonder if Paul will still have a job tomorrow morning.
There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious.
About the deception: Leaks from professional intelligence analysts, who are furious over the way their work was abused, have given us a far more complete picture of how America went to war. Thanks to reporting by my colleague Nicholas Kristof, other reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and a magisterial article by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman in The New Republic, we now know that top officials, including Mr. Bush, sought to convey an impression about the Iraqi threat that was not supported by actual intelligence reports.
In particular, there was never any evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda; yet administration officials repeatedly suggested the existence of a link. Supposed evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program was thoroughly debunked by the administration's own experts; yet administration officials continued to cite that evidence and warn of Iraq's nuclear threat.
Let’s hope that more of the mainstream press picks up on this theme. We were deceived into waging and illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation. In the eyes of most of the world, we are now the terrorists. We can’t go back, but we can sure as hell work to impeach the lying smirking rich white frat boy who calls himself our president.
What You Can Do to Impeach George Bush
Here’s a wire story I found in the St. Petersburg Times News Update section. Link may not work for long, so here’s the full story:
Crist willing to intervene in ACC-Big East feud
Florida's attorney general said today he's prepared to intervene on behalf of the University of Miami in a lawsuit aimed at blocking the school and two other Big East members from transferring to the Atlantic Coast Conference. Attorney General Charlie Crist said Miami has the right to choose which conference it wants to play in and that he was prepared to oppose a lawsuit filed earlier this month by representatives of the Big East Conference, including the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia. The suit claims the movement of Miami and possibly Boston College and Syracuse to the ACC would effectively bankrupt the Big East. "This is a fundamental dispute among athletic conferences and universities," Crist said. "Universities have the right to join any conference that invites them. The law does not compel Miami, or any institution, to rebuff a legitimate overture, as long as existing contractual obligations are satisfied."
So, Crist is quick to jump to the defense of a private institutions “rights,” even as the personal civil liberties of every citizen in this country are quickly being “disappeared” by his Republican cohorts. At least he has his priorities straight.
The Pentagon has decided that the country needs a little more pro-war fervor. According to The Orange County Weekly OC Weekly:
Apparently. The project even has a name: Operation Tribute to Freedom, putatively overseen by Air Force general Richard B. Myer. Check out the website at www.defendamerica.mil/otf/photos/index.html. Therein, it is claimed that Pentagon officials had been "inundated" with requests from communities asking how they could show support for the troops. Another press release remarks on the "spontaneous" displays of support for the military. And there doubtless have been many.
So why, then, does the Department of Defense deem it necessary to cold-call cities to sell them on a military salute?
"It seemed pretty obvious they were just trying to manufacture more public support for their war," said the city official.
Rumsfeld’s minions are actually calling municipalities around the country and encouraging them to base their July 4th celebrations on a pro-war theme. Here’s a much better idea, and it’s FREE!
I will be hosting Sonic Detour from 4 - 6 PM this afternoon on WMNF 88.5FM
Today, I'll be featuring mp3s from protestrecords.com.
The Sonic Detour is a little bit of the best of everything, so everything will not be protest related this afternoon, but if you tune in tomorrow morning from 4a to 6a, I will be featuring all protest songs all the time on Morning Wood, my regular gig at 88.5.
Howard Troxler thinks he has a recipe for reforming the Florida Legislature. He seems to feel much the same way as me about the current situation in Tallahassee:
Honestly. It has never been this brazen. Lobbyists write bills openly, and stand up to present them in front of committees. Some legislators who supposedly "sponsor" the bills can't even explain what they say. It used to be that members at least were ashamed when it came out that their bill was lobbyist-written. Now they just file blank bills, waiting for lobbyists to fill in the content.
Howard sez all we need do is take away a little power, in the form of redistricting, and a little money, mainly the soft money from party headquarters, and we'll be well on our way to having a Legislature that is actually responsive to the voters. I don't know if those ideas will be enough, but they're not a bad start.
Bush May Have Exaggerated, but Did He Lie? That’s the headline on a NY Times “News Analysis” piece today.
Most thinking people with a memory would say “Yes” to the question of “Did he or didn’t he (lie),” but the Times sees black and white (our Prez’s favorite colors) as grey. In fact, the Times takes statements that are obvious untruths and glosses over them:
On the question of taxes, Mr. Bush made a claim in his State of the Union address that was not true, and he repeated it often afterward. "This tax relief," he declared, "is for everyone who pays income taxes."
In fact, as the Tax Policy Center, a research arm of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, discovered, 8.1 million people who owe taxes would have received no tax cut from the Bush proposal and will get no break from the legislation that was enacted last month.
So, he lied, right? Not according to the Times. After giving their readers this unfiltered information, they go on to spin it in such a way that Bush comes out looking downright truthful.
But there are more than 100 million income tax payers in the country. So well over 90 percent will get some tax cut. If he had said "almost all," it would have been accurate.
They do the same with the WMD question:
The October speech was devoted largely to the threat of banned weapons. Iraq, Mr. Bush said, had "a massive stockpile of biological weapons" and "thousands of tons of chemical agents" and was "reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." The president asked, "If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?"
In the speech in March, on the eve of war, Mr. Bush declared, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
There is no evidence the president did not believe what he was saying.
So, Bush manipulated intelligence to suggest that weapons were there, and seems to believe his own lies, so that makes it ok?
See Bush Lies for an excellent rundown on many many more lies uttered by our President and his minions.
Nat Hentoff, writing in the Village Voice, comments on a report that the Justice Department released a few weeks ago detailing the abuses by the Justice Department under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act, a story that has been much under-covered in the mainstream press.
As for Inspector General Glenn Fine's report, the essence of his extensive evidence against the attorney general is that Ashcroft and some of the members of his senior staff deliberately established a policy that, as New York Times legal affairs reporter Adam Liptak noted—paraphrasing the report—replaced "ordinary rules" with "no rules or perverse ones."
Liptak continued, "The report says that the usual presumptions of the legal system were turned upside down in the aftermath of the attacks on September 11, 2001. As a result, people detained on immigration charges were considered guilty until proved innocent and were often held for months [without bail] after they were ordered [by judges] released [or deported]." (Emphasis added.)
They’re coming after the immigrants now. Some other group, maybe even one you belong to, will be next.
Check out Elaine Cassel’s column today for the whole thing.
Dr. Seuss Sees AMERICA, 2003 - Author Unknown
The Whos down in Whoville liked people a lot,
But the Grinch in the White House most certainly did not.
He didn't arrive there by the will of the Whos,
But stole the election that he really did lose.
Vowed to "rule from the middle," then installed his regime.
(Did this really happen, or is it just a bad dream?)
He didn't listen to voters, just his friends he was pleasin'
Now, please don't ask why, who knows what's the reason.
It could be his heart wasn't working just right.
It could be, perhaps, that he wasn't too bright.
Lucy Morgan, writing in the SP Times, clued me in on a practice I was unaware of:
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd passionately tried this week to defend fundraising in the middle of an important special session on medical malpractice.
He doesn't seem to understand how unseemly it looks for lawmakers to be debating the hottest issue of the year one minute and putting out their hands for contributions the next.
Government shouldn't tell candidates what they can do, Byrd insists. It's enough to ban fundraising during the regular session, he says.
The Leg. banned this practice several years ago when it became embarassingly clear that lobbyists were, in essence, trading money for votes:
...former Sen. Malcolm Beard, R-Seffner, who compared session fundraising with "shooting quail on the ground."
Beard noted how easy it was to raise money from a lobbyist who wanted his vote.
In this weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Walter Kirn opines on Clear Channel.
You used to be able to do that in America: chart your course by the accents, news and songs streaming in from the nearest AM transmitter. A drawling update on midday cattle prices meant I was in Wyoming or Nebraska. A guttural rant about city-hall corruption told me I'd reach Chicago within the hour. A soaring, rhythmic sermon on fornication -- Welcome to Alabama. The music, too. Texas swing in the Southwest oil country. Polka in North Dakota. Nonstop Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs. What's more, the invisible people who introduced the songs gave the impression that they listened to them at home. They were locals, with local tastes.
I felt like a modern Walt Whitman on those drives. When I turned on the radio, I heard America singing, even in the dumb banter of ''morning zoo'' hosts. But then last summer, rolling down a highway somewhere between Montana and Wisconsin, something new happened. I lost my way, and the radio couldn't help me find it. I twirled the dial, but the music and the announcers all sounded alike, drained, disconnected from geography, reshuffling the same pop playlists and canned bad jokes.
The News Dissector gives us the haps on the FCC Senate vote:
Bob McChesney for the new group Free Press says: "It is due almost entirely to the massive outpouring of public comments -- hundreds of thousand in just the past week -- opposing the idea of letting fewer media companies own more and more media."
And we need to keep those comments coming if we want this bill to be voted on by the full Senate.
Further down in today's column, The News Dissector give his own take on the Kristof column noted in BlogWood earlier today.
In his regular NY Times column, Nicholas Kristof, a supporter of Bush’s war, wonders if he’s had the wool pulled over his eyes, but stops way short of actually attaining a firm grasp on reality:
My guess is that "Saving Private Lynch" was a complex tale vastly oversimplified by officials, partly because of genuine ambiguities and partly because they wanted a good story to build political support for the war
So, the mainstream paper of record is finally implying that the Pentagon may have embellished this story a little bit, but in an apparent abundance of caution, the Times wont come right out and say we were lied to. Nicholas starts this same column with a little joke about WMDs:
I've been roaming Iraq, turning over rocks in my unstinting effort to help the Bush administration find those weapons of mass destruction. No luck yet.
He then goes on to explore a different Iraq related falsehood, writes it off as mere oversimplification, and completely ignores the fact that without WMDs there was no legal justification for an unprovoked attack on another sovereign nation.
Bill Clinton lied about sex and was impeached. Bush has lied (and people have died)
about every justification for invading Iraq, and there is almost no talk whatsoever in the mainstream press about holding him responsible for his actions. Could this be because the press itself was a huge and willing player, accepting Bush’s increasingly incredible assertions without so much as a whimper of truth? Might the press have been blinded by the impending excitement and potential ratings of sleeping with the Pentagon - er - I mean being embedded?
The Black Commentator has an interesting take on our imperialistic bumbling in Iraq:
This is an occupation unlike any other in modern history. Acting solely on greed and delusions, the Pirates dismissed the collective experience of humanity to attempt the occupation of a large and sophisticated society without a reasonable expectation of collaboration from any significant segment of the population. It cannot be done, as confirmed by the daily dispatches from Iraq and beyond.
Ellen Goodman on the working poor in this country.
Remember when The Wall Street Journal editorial page referred to low-income families as the “lucky duckies'' who don't pay any income taxes? Today the only social policy of the Bush administration is tax cuts, the only citizens worthy of compassion are taxpayers who want to conserve their wealth, and it's all supposed to roll off a lucky duckie's back.
Jack Sparks continues his good list of top 100 country songs:
There's a certain amount of irreverence involved in this list. That is to say, there are acts that I like that I don't revere, and vice versa. Second, this list is about to get really weird now that we're out of the top 20. I rant a lot about this, that, and the other thing, but, I firmly believe that, OUTSIDE OF A FEW EXCEPTIONS (note, to all you folks in the 615 area code, that means some of you are doin okay), the Nashville recording industry has been an ARTISTIC wasteland since about 1982. So, no, Garth Brooks just isn't going to show up on this list anywhere. He's made more money than God, Getty, and Johnny Cash, but that doesn't mean he contributed anything. If anything, he's created a bigger hole for everyone to crawl out of. So he can kiss my ass.
The Washington Post reports that executive pay rose significantly last year:
Total cash compensation in 2002, including salary, bonus and other direct payments, rose nearly 17 percent, to a median of about $1.2 million, in 2002. The median figure represents the point at which there are an equal number of chief executives above and below.
The bigger salary and bonuses in 2002 came in a year when corporate profits continued to stagnate and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, a broad indicator of the market, dropped 23 percent.
So, they led their companies to a year of stagnant profits and falling share prices. Obviously, they highly deserve this raise. And I’m sure that these same executives will be rushing to Congress with proposals to raise the minimum wage.
Why do we put up with crap like this and then force hard working but unskilled people to work 2 or 3 jobs just to pay their bills? If you make minimum wage, you bring home about $200 for a 40 hour work week. Probably no benefits. In Tampa, a city known for its lack of adequate public transportation, you have to own a car to keep a job. So, you have car maintenance and repairs, car payments, rent, utilities, food. Your budget is busted. Don’t even think about buying clothes or taking in a movie.
No problem. Just get a second job. That’ll bring in another $100 or so a week, and it’ll vastly increase personal productivity during times normally wasted: “family time” and “a good night’s sleep”, to name a couple. Of course, you may not have time for that movie anymore, but a person in your economic class is seen as shiftless if she so much as thinks about entertaining herself. So avoid criticism, and take it one step further: get a third job, and drop the apartment. You can sleep in your car between jobs and bathe in the ditch behind the dumpster. Your savings on rent will quickly propel you into the upper stratospheres of American income earners! Further, you will earn the respect of your peers, those hard working executives who are worth so much more than yourself!
The NY Times reports that the Bush administration continues to deceive Americans over global warming:
The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.
Remember the Bush mantra: there is no lie too big. As long as the lie is loudly repeated over and over, it will eventually come to be accepted as fact by most of the people.
Did Joe Redner get a raw deal? Looks like he may have. After an appeals court forced the Tampa City Council to revisit their denial of a liquor permit, they may have unlawfully muscled Redner into accepting less than ideal conditions in order to open his business:
To get wet zoning for the property, Redner said he had to agree to a year of probation and a ban on package alcohol sales.
"They take people's rights away, and they are so cavalier," Redner said. "It's not right."
The council is not allowed to impose extra restrictions on an applicant, Redner said. But a business owner can voluntarily agree to more conditions.
"The City Council uses that to coerce people to put conditions on themselves or leave empty-handed," said Luke Lirot, Redner's attorney.
The SP Times reports today that US Rep. Mark Foley is upset by some Florida summer camps.
For 10 years, young people ages 11 to 18 have gathered in Pasco and other Florida counties to pitch tents, swat volleyballs and sing around campfires.
Typical summer camp, save one important distinction: They do it naked.
...snip...
Foley suggested the camps force kids to fixate on nudity during their impressionable, formative years. Normal teen sexual urges can become inflamed by the nakedness around them, he said.
Sounds like Foley’s the one who has the fixation. He’s pushing to change the Florida law that allows nudity as long as there is no lewdness involved. Don’t laugh. Do watch out for yet another Republican attack on our civil liberties.
The Tampa Tribune has an article in today’s business section (note: why isn’t there a Labor Section?) that illustrates the underlying unfairness in setting arbitrary caps on pain and suffering (AKA noneconomic damages) in medical malpractice cases:
But Betsey Herd, a Tampa attorney who represents plaintiffs in medical malpractice cases, said that given the way economic damages are calculated, the people who are the most vulnerable and have the least resources would be the most hurt by capping noneconomic damages.
...snip...
``Noneconomic damages, for a large class of people, are the only damages that are available,'' said Mike Trentalange, a Tampa lawyer who specializes in malpractice cases.
Elaine Cassel weighs in with a look at the tricks and deceptions that make up Dubya’s recent racial profiling proclamation:
So, in one “order,” at once arrogant, bold, and evil, Bush has declared that it is lawful to violate the Constitution when he says it is—if you fit any racial or ethnic stereotype.
And his followers, and most un-thinking Americans, won’t know the difference. They think he did something worth applauding.
The ACLU knows better. The order, they say, is “little more than rhetorical smoke and mirrors…that will legitimize and encourage the use of racial profiling at our borders, in our airports and anywhere else federal agent can apply vague and hollow justifications of national security.”
I read this piece on MorningWood today. Lotsa requests for the source, so here you go:
Ben Tripp: Of Dissidents and Dissonance
I did my regular show on WMNF this morning from 4-6. I think I might rest for a while. Stay tuned for more rants later today or tomorrow.
A DNA dragnet in Miami is raising civil liberties concerns. Police, searching for a serial rapist, are asking for “voluntary” samples from hundreds of Hispanic males.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said he feared the testing may turn into a "dragnet roundup of all Hispanic males in that neighborhood."
He also said the samples should be destroyed once someone is cleared and the information should not be kept in a "database of innocent people."
The SP Times article says
Miami police Chief John Timoney said state law directs investigators to maintain the information in the state DNA database in Tallahassee.
But later a state spokesperson is quoted:
Suzanne Livingston, the director of forensics services for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said state law allows the state DNA database to hold both volunteer samples and those from people convicted of a crime. The database contains about 170,000 samples from offenders and more than 5,800 voluntary samples.
So, does state law require (or direct) law enforcement to keep these samples from “volunteers”, or is keeping the samples just one option that is allowed, the other perhaps being disposal?
The whole idea of a policeman asking someone to volunteer to do anything is rather sleazy. To put it simply, many people are intimidated by the presence of a police officer and do not feel empowered to say no to an officer’s request.
Right about now, many readers are saying something like Only people with something to hide worry about surveillance and tracking. Follow A this link for an excellent explanation of just why that argument holds no water.
An article from DRCNet illustrates another way the government is fighting to take away your civil liberties:
The RAVE Act, now known officially as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, championed by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), was ostensibly aimed at so-called raves, the large electronic music concerts often associated with open drug use, but was so broadly written that opponents argued it could be applied against any event or venue where owners or organizers did not take sufficiently repressive steps to prevent drug use. Opposition to the bill stalled it in the Senate last year, but this year Biden stealthily inserted it into the enormously popular Amber Alert Bill, which passed last month and was signed into law by President Bush.
While the Billings event was advertised as a benefit concert for two local groups interested in drug law reform -- not as a drug-taking orgy -- it still attracted the attention of the DEA. On May 30, the day the event was set to take place, a Billings-based DEA agent showed up at the Eagle Lodge, which had booked the concert. Waving a copy of the RAVE Act in one hand, the agent warned that the lodge could face a fine of $250,000 if someone smoked a joint during the benefit, according to Eagle Lodge manager Kelly, who asked that her last name not be used.
Remember the Fourteen Principles of Fascism? Number 11 reads:
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist
nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to
higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon
for professors and other academics to be censored or
even arrested. Free __expression in the arts is openly
attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the
arts.
An editorial in the SP Times today says the tax system in Florida is so regressive that it is Worse than Alabama
The poorest 20 percent of non-elderly Floridians, those with incomes under $15,000, pay the state and local governments $14.40 of every $100 they earn. In Alabama, the equivalent poorest 20 percent pay $10.60 out of every $100.
The SP Times has several articles about malpractice in today’s edition. This one relates a “typical” case that results in a verdict for the doctors.
The outcome of the case is not that unusual locally.
Maye, 44, has presided over three other malpractice trials during her two years on the civil court. Plaintiffs lost all three. Roland Lamb, the hospital's co-counsel, says he has lost fewer than 10 of the more than 100 malpractice suits that he has argued and that have gone all the way to a verdict. Mendoza's insurer, ProAssurance, has won defense verdicts in 29 of 36 malpractice suits so far this year in Florida.
An obvious question: if this is a typical result, why do we need tort reform? Huge jury awards are the exception, not the rule, and are invariably whittled down or overturned on appeal.
Elaine Cassell reprints a very timely warning about what can happen to a free society during times of terror:
Noah Leavitt, human rights attorney and contributor to Findlaw's Writ and Counterpunch, recently wrote about what America can learn from another South American country's "experiment" in dealing with terrorism--that of Peru. Noah explains why it is so important that Americans resist the move of the Bush Administration. Ultimately, citizen resistance paved the way for reform. For those who have thrown up their hands and cried, "What can I do?' Noah offers practical suggestions about why we must fight, resist, and oust the administration that has no respect for the constitution and the rule of law.
William Safire's column in the NY Times today is a rare case of the old bastard making some sense. Check out his ramblings on the recent FCC decision.
(The FCC decision) troubles some readers, listeners and viewers who don't like homogenized news or one-size-fits-all entertainment forced down their throats. When I inveighed against this impending sellout a couple of weeks ago, thousands — no kidding, an unprecedented torrent — of e-mails came roaring in, many beginning "Though I consider you a rightwing nutcase on most issues, I'm 100% with you against this big-media power grab."
The headline in the SP Times says ”Building redesign saves old oak,” but if you read the article, this quote may jump out at you:
City Council member Mary Alvarez predicted the tree would live another 100 years.
"Nothing kills that tree," she said.
But on the site plan approved Thursday, which showed a spot for the grand oak, there was an asterisk.
The development will effectively kill the tree, it said.
The project, which originally would have bulldozed the tree, will now be so close to the grand oak that it will probably die.
Instead of a fast death, it could be a slow one.
"I think trees need space," said Steve Graham, the city's urban forester.
That last utterance may be controversial in Tampa. Oh, and Mary: YOU just killed that tree.
The city has a so-called tree ordinance that is supposed to protect large specimens such as this one. Whether people realize it or not, trees are good things, and large trees provide huge benefits in our warm and moist climate.
I’d rather they just chop the thing down, but the huge scar left in the shade by their actions would be too ugly and shocking even to casual observers. By saving the tree in order to kill it more slowly, the tree will gradually wither away, and most people will hardly notice its final demise.
It’s not all bad, though: once all the trees are gone we can all flock to the common areas of our local Corporate Welfare Malls and hang out in the cool AC. We don’t need no stinking shade. Why “corporate welfare”? Taxpayers pad the profits of mall developers through sweetheart lease deals, tax incentives, and other giveaways. Then the malls come in (chopping down all the trees) and essentially become our common areas. Unfortunately, despite the fact that you are helping to pay for these things, you can only hang out if you dress and act appropriately. Watch the slogans on your t-shirts, and don’t even think about turning your hat around backwards. And don’t lean on that silk “tree” in the food court, ‘cause you sure don’t wanna take a chance on damaging corporate property.
The Weak Planet has a decent article on Fox News this week. Written by some guy in Charlotte.
...the scariest thing about Fox and Rupert Murdoch, the thing that renders them all fear and no fun in a time of national crisis, is that they channel for the Bush administration as faithfully as if they were on the White House payroll. Like no other substantial media outlet in American history, Fox serves -- voluntarily -- as the propaganda arm of a controversial, manipulative, image-obsessed government. To watch its war coverage for even a minute was to grind your teeth convulsively at each Orwellian repetition of the Newspeak mantra, "Operation Iraqi Freedom." I swear I hate to stoop to Nazi analogies; but if Joseph Goebbels had run his own cable channel, it would have been indistinguishable from Fox News.
Remember: the Planet fired all their writers several months ago, and promised that local coverage would not be affected. Yeah, right. The other big article this week is a commentary by a Washington based writer. This is like the Clear Channelization of our local alt weekly.
Here’s an old article from Cincinnati that explains simply what happens when a media conglomerate gobbles up previously locally owned radio stations. Seems to me a similar scenario is playing out at the Planet.
It's shortly after 10 a.m. in Rochester, N.Y., and Randi West is explaining to her KISS106 listeners how they can win Ricky Martin concert tickets.
At the same time, she's telling listeners in Louisville how they can win Britney Spears tickets. She's chatting with a caller to her Toledo show, promoting a lunch giveaway on her Charleston, S.C., station and promoting a free “spring break” trip to her fans in Des Moines.
She does all this while hosting the mid-morning show on Cincinnati's WKFS-FM (107.1) from the KISS107 studios in Mount Auburn, thanks to a digital computer network linking the six Clear Channel stations.
At about the same time, listeners of Cincinnati's WVMX-FM (94.1) hear MIX94.1 host Lisa Thomas promote the station's “Wheels of Fortune” BMW giveaway, unaware that she's broadcasting digitally from Clear Channel's MIX102.9 in Dallas.
That silly John Burt... he's always mixing up the concept of God's love and the act of making love. Poor guy... maybe he'll get it right someday.
Mary Jo Melone chips in with her opinion on this developing case of yet another white Christian male spreading the sticky goo of God:
Burt's persona had a lot to do with being a dangerous bully. Burt, 65, has long been a national figure on the fringe side of the pro-life movement.
And he helped turned Pensacola into ground zero of the abortion wars in the 1980s and 1990s, when three clinics were bombed and two doctors and one bodyguard were shot and killed.
Here's
a link to the original article, reprinted in its entirety below.
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times
published June 12, 2003
ORLANDO - A woman who lost her bid to be the legal guardian for a mentally disabled woman who is pregnant from a rape has asked a court to appoint her the fetus' guardian.
The attorney for Emelia Belford asked Circuit Judge Lawrence Kirkwood to appoint her as guardian of the fetus for J.D.S., the name the 22-year-old woman is called in court records.
J.D.S., who has the mental ability of a 4-or-5-year-old, became pregnant after being raped in a state-licensed group home in Orlando. She is approaching her third trimester.
Belford had asked to be the woman's guardian, but Kirkwood chose another professional guardian, Patti Jarrell, to make medical, legal and personal decisions for J.D.S. Jarrell is currently obtaining a medical evaluation for J.D.S.
Previously, another woman, Jennifer Wixtrom, asked to be named the fetus' guardian, but Kirkwood denied the request, ruling that Florida law doesn't offer any basis for appointing a guardian for a fetus. Wixtrom is appealing.
The case became the focus of an abortion debate after Gov. Jeb Bush and Department of Children and Families Secretary Jerry Regier, who oppose abortion, overruled regional child welfare officials and ordered them to seek a guardian for the woman's fetus.
The regional DCF officials had said such an appointment would be illegal. Kirkwood said the same.
Jeb is on the road drumming up support for his medical malpractice “reform.” The central part of his package would limit damages for pain and suffering that are awarded to people who suffer from a doctor’s mistakes. Like other lawsuit cap bills, this one seeks to protect industry (insurance, in this case) and pump up profits at the expense of deserving victims whose lives have been shattered.
Sure, there may be an occasional jury award that seems excessive at first glance, but many of these are whittled down on appeal, and you can bet that if a plaintiff gets to the point that a jury has awarded her a significant amount of money that she is hurting pretty bad.
We have a jury system in place to decide what people are entitled to when harm is done to them by others. Don’t fall for the false sales rhetoric that Jeb is pitching. Do call these senators and tell them that you oppose any caps on lawsuits, medical malpractice included.
"There are a few wandering senators who need to get back on the reservation to deal with this crisis," Bush told a roundtable discussion at the south Hillsborough County hospital. "Take Sarasota, Manatee and Hillsborough County. Their senators are not committed to meaningful reform, and I think they need to hear, politely and respectfully, about how this plays out in the real world."
Bush identified four senators as Victor Crist of Tampa, Lisa Carlton of Osprey, Michael Bennett of Bradenton, and Tom Lee of Brandon - all Republicans. All four oppose a central element of the Bush plan: limiting damages for pain and suffering in malpractice cases to $250,000, regardless of the number of defendants.
David Lindorff, writing in Counterpunch, warns us of one more lube-freee Rebpulican position:
If ordinary working people needed some hard evidence that this Republican government in Washington is not on their side--that it is, in fact, out to get them--they finally have it in a very simple form: the effort in Congress to eliminate overtime pay.
Jack Spark's The Other Side of Country is smoking, as usual, this week. He is reviewing a new book, Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles, by David Cantwell (DC) and Bill Friskics-Warren (BFW), which he actually likes, despite the tone of this quote:
To whit...Number 358, "Any Man of Mine," by Shania Twain. I applaud DC and BFW for finding a way to speak intelligently about her music. On the other hand, if my gig is to have any validity whatsoever, I HAVE to err on the side of paranoia. This woman is nothing. Her music, persona, the whole bit is all engineered. Where they see an injection of pop-diva sensibility and feminine strength, I see pure evil. This woman's existence is dictated by her scumbag husband, who designs every song, every note, every inflection of her computer generated voice to create "alternate income streams" for one of the many rooms in their Swiss chalet. If as author, you've decided to limit your song pool only to singles, then you're almost forced to give credence to these acute pop incursions into the genre, especially if they sell a lot of units.
What Pixies song are you? Thanks to Melissa Maerz for this one!
With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself
Where is my mind,
Where is my mind,
Where is my mind?
The SP Times reports that a Tampa lawyer is getting a little greedy:
Michael Addison complained each year when he wrote his check for an occupational license.
The business tax of about $350 wasn't enough to fight over. But it was enough money to affect his pocketbook.
"That's a lot of money," Addison said Tuesday. "That's a dinner at Bern's."
I’m not gonna sit here and defend every little governement fee, but let’s face facts: municipalities tax and regulate businesses. That’s one of the ways they raise revenue. I pay fees and taxes to the City of Tampa every year in order to keep my computer business legal. The fees are like any other tax: a pain in the ass when they have to be paid, but not otherwise overly burdensome. If we stop funding the government, we end up with nothing: no schools, no roads, no police or fire protection, etc. I think the lawyers can afford to chip in a little through the same occupational fees that other businesses must pay.
John Burt, the anti-abortion supporter of terrorists, has been apprehended:
Burt had been missing since Thursday, when he drove away from the home.
Burt is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old resident of Our Father's House, the wayward girls' home he owns in nearby Milton. He is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, lewd or lascivious conduct and three counts of lewd or lascivious molestation.
His family earlier said they were sure he had died. Many people probably hoped he had simply killed himself, but like many of his hypocritical holier-than-thou brethren, Burt is obviously too much of a coward to do violence unto himself.
Steve Perry’s Monday blog includes excerpts from Jay Bookman’s assessment as to why we really went to war:
...why does the administration seem unconcerned about an exit strategy from Iraq once Saddam is toppled?
Because we won't be leaving. Having conquered Iraq, the United States will create permanent military bases in that country from which to dominate the Middle East, including neighboring Iran.
The NY Times reports that Tom Delay and the Bushies are arguing about just how bad to screw the poor. The Prez wants to look compassionate by revising the tax bill to include millions of people who urgently need relief and who were shut out at the last minute by Republicans. Bush then signed the bill knowing that these people would get nothing.
The majority leader's defiance of the White House reflected growing frustration among conservatives about pressure from the administration to provide a benefit to millions of minimum-wage families who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.
Delay may not really be going against the White House. As long as Bush can look like he tried, his ass will seem to be covered.
Meanwhile, the deficit is growing huge. The Republicans are right on target to strip so much funding from the government that Social Security and Medicare will have to be “reformed” to “save” them. At the same time, budgets for the military continue to rise, and education and healthcare, two items that would appear to be guaranteed by our constitution are completely forgotten about(from the Preamble of our Constitution: “ We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,... promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,...” aren’t education and healthcare integral parts of our general welfare?).
The House Republicans released their proposal soon after the Congressional Budget Office projected that the budget deficit this year would exceed $400 billion. In dollar terms, a deficit of that level would be the biggest on record, topping the $290 billion deficit in 1992, though as a percentage of total economic output it would be smaller, at 4 percent, than the record 6 percent deficit of 1983.
This new blog has lots of cool features, like archives and comments. Comment on any blog entry by clicking the link at the end of each post!
The Original BlogWood can still be accessed, but will no longer be updated. A link will remain for some time on the left side of this page as well.
James Ridgeway's Village Voice column this week has alerted me to a scary development. Both this article and another from The Boston Globe alude to Florida municipalities that are implementing this program, but I have seen nothing in local papers.
OK. I've managed to install and configure this new blogging software. I'm now using Moveable Type, a very powerful and flexible package.
One item that sticks in my mind from this morning is this article from the SP Times.
" John Allen Burt, a controversial Pensacola antiabortion activist who opened a home and school for pregnant teens in rural Santa Rosa County, has been charged with four sex crimes and was being sought Monday night by Panhandle sheriff's deputies."
How strange! An self-appointed moral crusader who claims to be helping wayward girls is actually abusing these children while they are in his care. He'd probably say the girls were getting their just punishment...