BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering

Fox News fair and balanced morning memo

In case anyone missed this, it's a must read from Jim Romenesko's blog. A little inside info from a former Fox News editor:

From MATT GROSS, assistant editor, New York magazine: As a former editor at Foxnews.com -- and therefore clearly a disgruntled ex-employee -- let me just say that the right-wing bias was there in the newsroom, up-front and obvious, from the day a certain executive editor was sent down from the channel to bring us in line with their coverage. His first directive to us: Seek out stories that cater to angry, middle-aged white men who listen to talk radio and yell at their televisions. (Oh, how I'd love to stick quotation marks around what is nearly a direct quote.)

What followed was a dumbing-down of what had been an ambitious and talented news operation. Stories could be no more than 1,000 words, then 800 (I heard it was reduced further after I left, in March 2001). More and more effort was devoted to adapting FNC "scripts" into Web stories, which meant we were essentially correcting the errors of FNC "reporters" who couldn't be bothered to get the facts.

To me, FNC reporters' laziness was the worst part of the bias. It wasn't that they were toeing some political line (though of course they were; see the embarrassing series on property rights from 2000), it was that the facts of a story just didn't matter at all. The idea was to get those viewers out of their seats, screaming at the TV, the politicians, the liberals -- whoever -- simply by running a provocative story.

The bizarre and sad part of this was that, at the Website, most of the reporters, editors, and producers were liberals -- and not only liberals but young, energetic, ambitious, talented journalists. Some of my friends still work there, and some of them no doubt wish they could leave for a better job elsewhere. Why don't they (and why didn't Charles Reina)? Well, despite the Bush administration's clear success in revitalizing the U.S. economy, the job market for journos is still pretty poor, especially if your portfolio is full of badly reported 600-word clunkers. (Sorry, guys.)

But what do I know? I haven't worked there in two and a half years -- I haven't voluntarily watched FNC since then -- so maybe things have changed. But from what Reina wrote, and what I experienced, it doesn't sound like it.

"Dark Clouds" over Iraq?

(note: "dark clouds" is a reference to this earlier post)

More from Atrios

Hajji

Yay! Yet another cute nickname!

BAGHDAD, Iraq — World War II had its "krauts," Vietnam had its "gooks," and now, the war on terrorism has its own dehumanizing name: "hajji."

That's what many U.S. troops across Iraq and in coalition bases in Kuwait now call anyone from the Middle East or South Asia. Soldiers who served in Afghanistan say it also is used there.

Advertisement

Among Muslims, the word is used mainly as a title of respect. It means "one who has made the hajj," the pilgrimage to Mecca.

But that's not how soldiers use it.

Some talk about "killing some hajjis" or "mowing down some hajjis." One soldier in Iraq inked "Hodgie Killer" onto his footlocker.

UN-redacted DOJ report from The Memory Hole

The Memory Hole brings us the full text of the heavily censored report on workforce diversity the Justice Department released last week. There are many many sections in this report that the Justice Department did not want you to see, but they screwed up. By posting the redacted report in Adobe Acrobat searchable format, they actually made it possible to very easily UNredact the entire report. Luckily, The Memory Hole >The Memory Hole noticed this.

Atrios wants to know where teh mainstream media was on this easy find.

Backward panhandle town’s racist present catches up to it

To me, this was not a surprise, as I’ve traveled through this general area of Florida on a few occasions and have always experienced a sense of being unwelcome. Strict blue laws and a general sense of intolerance are the things I remember most about those trips. On one occasion, some rednecks in a Ford passed slowly by me as I walked toward a local WalMart (the only choice: the giant blood-sucking retailer had already run all the local businesses into the ground) from my hotel.

They must have decided that my long hair indicated a tendency toward homosexuality, because they turned around, swerved toward me, and pelted me with empty beer cans while screaming “FAGGOT” at the top of their lungs. (Or maybe this was just part of a bizarre mating ritual?)

Now, perhaps this incident colored my perception, but when I reached the WalMart and went inside, not a single store employee so much as smiled at me. I got the distinct impression that while they were grudgingly willing to take my tainted money, they were absolutely not going to make me feel welcome.

Similar incidents dogged me for the rest of my stay in this part of Florida: rude waitresses, SLOW service, to the point of being almost no service at all, and lots of sideways glances. Maybe it was just what I ordered, but plenty of people who came in well after I did were served well before I got my simple sandwich and chips.

Now, I’m a white male. Granted, I have rather long locks, and I sometimes dress a little funny, but for the most part, I resemble the people who were fucking with me. I coulda stuck my hair up into a John Dear gimme cap and fit right in. But they still fucked with me. ‘Cause I looked and acted a little different. A large portion of the population in theses parts of Florida are this backward and closed-minded. Believe it.

SPTimes:

At the crossroads of three major highways, this small North Florida town has spent two weary years erasing the stain left by allegations of racism.

It's not done yet.

A South Florida man has complained to Attorney General Charlie Crist that he was kicked out of a motel swimming pool in July because "coloreds are not allowed in the pool." Crist has begun an investigation, he announced Thursday.

The owner of the Southern Inn said he merely told Dwayne Parker the pool was reserved for registered guests. He said he is shocked by the allegation.

"I don't discriminate against anyone," said Raj Patel, who immigrated to the United States from his native India in 1989 and displays four American flags in his lobby.

Patel's words echo those of the former owner of the Perry Package store, who lost his liquor license after a black man, who happened to be a Maryland lawmaker, complained he was denied service in 2001.

Although Parker was a registered guest, the children swimming with him and their parents were not, Patel said. With no lifeguard on duty, Patel said, he can't risk letting local kids swim in the pool. "I told them nicely and they left the pool," Patel said.

Crist isn't so sure. "I decided it was time to issue the subpoena and find out what was going on," he said.

The attorney general is using a new civil rights law he sought and lawmakers passed this year. Several witnesses say they heard the racial slur, according to subpoenas issued in the case.

Reached at his home in West Palm Beach, Parker declined comment.

Perry (pop. 6,847) is 55 percent white, 41 percent black. Home to the Buckeye Cellulose mill and the polluted Fenholloway River, the town is still dealing with the aftershocks of the 2001 incident involving Maryland lawmaker Talmadge Branch.

Branch stopped for a drink at the Perry Package Store on his way to a political meeting in Tallahassee and said he was told he could not sit at the bar. The bartender told him to take his drink to a back room, Branch said.

"It's one thing to read about it happening in the '60s or the '50s, and it's another to actually live it," Branch said at the time.

That case sparked civil and criminal investigations, as well as intense interest by the Florida Commission on Human Relations, which set up shop in Perry and used the $15,000 fine the state charged the bar to set up race education workshops that lasted almost two years.
......

Greg Parker, a lawyer who served on the Perry race relations committee and represented the owner of the Perry Package, said things have improved.
......

The negative attention the town received in 2001 made it "an easy whipping post" for future complaints, Greg Parker said. Just because an allegation is made in Perry doesn't make it true, he added.

Wayne Dunwoody, president of the Taylor County NAACP, disagrees with that assessment.

Things in Perry have soured since 2001, he said.

"People want to make it look like things are getting better," Dunwoody said. "I think things have gotten worse."

Black students are punished more severely than white students for the same infraction, Dunwoody said, causing tension in local schools. And although some businesses, such as Buckeye, made a real effort after the Perry Package incident to hire blacks, many others continued to hire only whites, he said.

"More-qualified blacks are not getting jobs that are being given to less-qualified whites," Dunwoody said. And the race relations committee wasn't aggressive enough, he said.
......

"I don't have any idea why they are accusing me," said Patel.

Patel's two-story, orange-brick Southern Inn with its sky blue doors sits on U.S. 19 in Perry. In the lobby, a large American flag hangs in the window where drivers can't miss it. Two plastic flags are stuck on the front door and a large picture of a flag and an eagle hang over the front desk with the words God Bless America. Formerly the Villager Lodge, the motel was renamed the Southern Inn two years ago by Patel.

The St. Petersburg Times reported two years ago that a black guest of the Villager Lodge complained of poor treatment at the motel's pool in 1999.

Jeanette Flowers was enjoying the pool with family members when she said "the owner came out and started pouring bleach in the pool." She filed complaints with state regulators, but nothing could be proven and Patel was cleared of wrongdoing.

Now, the Tribune’s headline reads ”Cloud Back Over” Perry, which is kinda like saying “Nigger back over Perry,” as I’ve heard the term “dark cloud” used as a subtle derogatory description ever since I’ve lived in Tampa.

...... But that same motel stands accused of perpetuating a darker side of small-town Southern life.

On Thursday, Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist issued a subpoena to the Southern Inn as part of an investigation into allegations that the owner told black guests that ``coloreds'' were not allowed in the swimming pool.

The case has again put the national spotlight on Perry's racial divide, which was exposed two years ago when a Maryland legislator who stopped for a beer at a tavern was told that he would have to drink it in a back room reserved for black patrons.
......

Crist's subpoena seeks records on rates charged to motel guests, length of stays and other information. It could lead to the first official complaint filed under Florida's revamped civil rights laws.
......

The attorney general said his investigators have interviewed ``five or six'' witnesses who have corroborated Parker's version of events.

``Based on that, we felt it was appropriate to issue the subpoena to further establish what the facts are and what was happening at the Southern Inn,'' Crist said.

Crist said the fact that Thursday's subpoena was served in the same small city as the 2001 incident was irrelevant.
......

But to Perry residents and others, it instantly brought to mind the incident at Perry Package Store & Lounge.

On Feb. 3, 2001, Talmadge Branch, a Maryland legislator, asked for a beer at the bar on U.S. 19. He was told that he would be served in a back room.

Branch filed a complaint, and everyone from Florida lawmakers to Gov. Jeb Bush to the Rev. Al Sharpton entered the fray.
......

``It aggravates me to think that a misconception would bring this cloud back over Taylor County,'' said Sonny Buckhalter, owner of Buck's Perry Package & Lounge. ``We don't need this label. That's not the way we are. Not just me - the city.''

But a group of black men gathered at the 98 Bar disagreed.

They told stories of discrimination on the job, of ``black bars'' and ``white bars'' and of harassment by police.

``Ever since I've been here, it's been like that,'' said Jonathan Sellers, a truck driver who has lived in Perry for 15 years. ``Ain't nothing changed.''

Shirley G. Scott's position is somewhere between the Perry Package owner and the 98 Bar patrons. ``We have made progress since the last incident,'' said the three-term Perry City Councilwoman. ``And evidently there is still progress to be made.''

SXSW Band Roundup

UPDATE 12/31/2003

Who’s playing? Here’s a list of the 7 bands who have been invited to perform at the Tampa Music Showcase in Austin this March:

Here are the 7 bands with 2 alternates:
Shotgun Wedding (private chinaski)
Rebekah Pulley
Crippled Masters
Anna O
Red Tide
Auditorium
Willie Lomax Blues Revue

John McNicholas
Four Star Riot

On Saturday, February 7, we will be hosting a fundraiser at Skipper's Smokehouse: Cash for Ca$h... Johnny Cash covers and original songs inspired by JC.

Thanks to all the bands who applied through BlogWood and elsewhere. See you at Skipper’s!
(end of update)

Here's a press release from a group I am heavily involved in. Feel free to email me with offers of support . Bands should email bands@blogwood.com to let us know that they are interested.

Know a band that deserves to go? Let the band know, and posat something in the comments section at the end of this post too!

SXSW Band Roundup

2nd Annual Tampa Bay band showcase in Austin seeks applicants.

The SXSW music lovers group (SMLG) is once again going to put on a showcase of bands/solo musicians on the opening day of the SXSW Music Conference in Austin, Texas. Last year a group of regular SXSW attendees, SMLG, raised money and helped send 6 Tampa Bay area bands to Austin to perform for conference attendees, music media and music fans. This year the group is looking for bands to perform on the opening day of the 2004 SXSW Music Conference. All interested bands should email the SMLG at bands@blogwood.com with a letter of interest stating their interest in being considered for the showcase on March 17th 2004 in Austin. All types of music are welcome. Bands can go to blogwood.com for more information.

All letters of interest must be received by November 30th.

The group is looking for bands that are already considering going to SXSW. Last year the group was able to raise money to fund the showcase and contribute a small amount to help fund the band’s expenses. Participating bands will be required to perform at 1-3 fund raising shows and supply their own back line. The group will select 5 bands from all submissions.

Preference will be given in order to the following:

Performers that have been selected by the SXSW Music Conference to perform
Performers that have applied to the SXSW Music Conference. (Deadline is November 7th. See sxsw.com for details) SMLG is NOT affiliated with SXSW.
Performers that have not already performed at the showcase
Performers with a retail quality CD
Performers with a track record of Tampa Bay area performances

All money raised after the showcase expenses will be split among the participating bands. SMLG does not guarantee any amount of support other than the showcase. Bands will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations and probably have to supply the back line and may have to supply sound.

Due to the expected volume of emails, SMLG will only be able to answer the emails of the bands they are considering. Hey we all have full time day jobs.

SMLG is a group of folks who LOVE music, goes to SXSW every year, and want to introduce Tampa Bay musicians to other like-minded people.

LaBrake is a scumbag

TT:

Contamination of city land that once housed a chemical company threatens groundwater supplies in a Tampa neighborhood, officials said Wednesday.

High levels of petroleum, heavy metals and dry-cleaning solvents have been detected at 1529 W. La Salle St., former site of the defunct Tarpon Chemical and Supply Co. east of Rome Avenue and south of Interstate 275.
......

The city acquired the property along with hundreds of others after affordable housing efforts collapsed in the wake of the scandal surrounding former city housing chief Steve LaBrake.

A house moved from a south Tampa lot to make room for a home LaBrake had built was relocated to the contaminated property. The unoccupied house sits near a concrete foundation and two pipes that are the remains of the chemical company, which vacated the land in the 1980s.
......

Contaminants that exceeded state standards in soil tests included chromium (62 milligrams per kilogram), ethylbenzene (1.6 mg per kg), tetrachloroethene (1.1) and vinyl chloride (.0089). Contaminants that exceeded state standards in groundwater samples included chromium (0.6 mg per liter) and lead (.056).
......

The city normally checks for contamination before acquiring property.

But it didn't know about the La Salle pollution when it took control of the land in June 2002 from Tampa Hillsborough Action Plan, the nonprofit agency that had been involved in the city's housing loan program.

THAP had acquired the La Salle site and others with federal help. But the city cut ties with THAP after the agency was accused of doing favors for LaBrake and Lynne McCarter, who was his girlfriend and a subordinate employee.

City officials have said improper use of federal grants in a low-cost housing program run by LaBrake and involving THAP might force the city to repay $4 million.
......

Moving the house to the La Salle property in 1998 to make room for LaBrake's south Tampa home didn't cause the contamination, Salmon said.

No, the house did not cause the contamination of this lot, but it may complicate the cleanup, and it’s illustrative of how the city conducted business under LaBrake’s slimy tutelage. The house was moved to the lot in 1998 to make room for a house LaBrake was having built for himself in a much more expensive neighborhood in South Tampa. LaBrake acquired the South Tampa property and then had his construction buddies (to whom he gave tons of city work) build him an expensive house and charge him much less than market value. At the very least, he used his position of public trust to profit financially. A grand jury is meeting to determine if any other malfeasance was involved.

It cost $24,000 to move this house to a contaminated lot where it sat for 4 years before anyone knew that the lot was polluted. Obviously, there were never any plans to rehab and sell this house - it was simply parked on this lot to make room for LaBrake’s new mansion.

And, you know, it’s just possible that Steve LaBrake might have known something was wrong with this property, since a chemical factory once occupied the site and all the neighbors seem to have had their own suspicions:( continued from today’s TT article)

Tarpon Chemical and Supply, incorporated in 1962, operated a storage and retail facility on the property. Records show the company was dissolved in 1986, and former President Fred Schlichte died in 1992.

``If there are any vestiges of the company, our attorneys would like to talk to them,'' Salmon said.

Debbie Tramel, who lives in a nearby apartment complex with her two children, said a man who used to live on the property told residents that chemicals were buried near his house.

``Everyone knew something was there,'' she said, ``but we still don't know what.''

Christian love

TT:

An 18-year-old student has sued a Christian school, alleging he was expelled three days after he told a teacher he was gay.

Jeffrey Woodard said a teacher pulled him out of Bible class at Jupiter Christian School in August and asked him in confidence whether he is gay.

When Woodard answered ``yes,'' a school official called his mother, Carol Gload, and told her Woodard could not attend an upcoming school retreat unless he and Gload met with the school to talk about Woodard's sexual orientation, according to the lawsuit.

Gload said the school told them Woodard could get counseling for his ``problem,'' voluntarily withdraw or be expelled.
......

Karen Doering, an attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights in Tampa, said the school broke no law.

``Unfortunately, in the state of Florida, discrimination based on sexual orientation is not specifically prohibited by any law,'' Doering said. ``When it comes to public schools, it is clear the Constitution protects youth based on sexual orientation; however, that does not apply to private schools.''

Judge jilts Jeb!

Jeb and the sugar industry managed to get the long-serving judge who was overseeing the court ordered Everglades cleanup fired, figuring that they'd do better with someone less familiar with the case. Oops...

A federal judge agreed with environmental groups and an Indian tribe Wednesday to appoint an expert to monitor Everglades pollution cleanup, in a defeat for the Bush administrations in Washington and Tallahassee.

Government agencies and politically powerful sugar growers vigorously objected to the appointment of a special master to consider whether an 11-year-old Everglades restoration pact is being violated or will be soon.

"To delay action would be irresponsible," U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said in an order issued after business hours. The special master "will offer additional assurance that the Everglades cleanup will proceed in a timely and efficient fashion."

An environmental lawyer will be named in two weeks to supervise all sides, examine the science, monitor cleanup construction projects and report to the court.

Greenpeace unwelcome

SP Times

The Port of Miami refused to allow a Greenpeace ship to dock Monday, saying it poses security problems.

Greenpeace, an environmental activist group, requested a one-week berth for the 237-foot Esperanza, a retrofitted Soviet navy icebreaker used to highlight its campaigns. It wanted to resupply the ship, change its crew and conduct onboard tours.
......

The request to dock originally was denied in early October. Juan Kuryla, an assistant port director, said port officials decided the ship poses "undue security concerns."

In an Oct. 14 letter to Greenpeace, port director Charles A. Towsley cited the ship's intention to hold tours in a restricted area of the port and "an apparent inability, or unwillingness, to abide by applicable laws and security regulations" to explain the denial.

Today on MourningWood

The MourningWood Halloween Special, featuring DJ DeadWood!

MP3 List hour 1

MP3 List hour 2

Live playlist

The Gashlycrumb Tinies - by Edward Gorey, to be read between 4 and 5am.

Tractatus Ridiculous, by Adam Engel, to be read between 5 and 6am:

Pipe Dream

1.0 Suppose -- it's difficult -- but suppose we were to become men and women rather than the little boys and girls the plutocratic pedophilic Pharaohs have been shtupping from Day One. What would life be like? Would we still worry more about cholesterol and tooth decay than global warming? Would Real Men still wear ties and dread the possibility of gay genes swishing furtively throughout their DNA? Would women still be too fat or too thin or too something (hairy, maybe?) to be forty without surgery or Photoshop?

Steve Gilliard on "a really bad day in Iraq"

Steve Gilliard's News Blog should be on your daily visit list:

Centcom is trying to spin the fact that an RPG shot down another helicopter. Which is what happened. It didn't just "come down". By what? A faulty engine? Please. Try grenade. Then they pulled an ambush on the downed chopper.

Think about it: the helicopter just landed and then an ambush just miraculously exploded around it? Please. They ran into the simple version of a flak trap, and then when they came down, they were fighting for their lives. Which is no more an accident than the assassination attempt on Wolfowitz.

Corporate welfare thrives in Florida; Wal-Mart sucks

In Florida, a state that is racing third world countries to the bottom of the wage scale, companies like WalMart, which place bets on the impending demise of their employees (see excerpt below) and are known for driving local businesses into the ground, are rewarded with generous tax breaks and outright subsidies regressively financed by the poor. Speaking of poorly paid janitors, WalMart’s cleaning companies entry level wages start at $2.00 per DAY.

Why do we let our elected representatives continue to get away with cutting social services, education, health care, and other absolutely necessary programs while throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at corporate pigs?

Carnival Corp., Florida's 10th-largest public company with 4,220 South Florida employees and a $136-million state payroll, posted more than $1-billion in profits last year.

It also paid nothing in Florida corporate income tax.
......

In fact, 98 percent of the estimated 1.5-million businesses in Florida paid nothing. And many of those that did pay found ways to reduce their tax bills.

At a time when Florida is scraping for every dollar to improve education, build roads and prisons and buy prescription drugs for the poor, Florida's corporate income tax is all but dead.
......

** As the corporate tax percentage declines, the state's reliance on the sales tax - which hits the poorest Floridians five times harder than the richest - is growing.

** By one state estimate, legal exemptions, credits, deductions and loopholes cost Florida $1.2-billion a year - more than the corporate tax generates.

In a state with a $53.5-billion budget, $1.2-billion would be enough to hire 28,000 teachers or build 3,500 classrooms or bring teachers' salaries in line with the national average.

It would be enough to build 30,000 prison beds or 425 miles of two-lane roads. Or enough to provide prescription drug coverage for 50,000 seniors for more than a decade.

......

"There's a good side to it," said Jim Zingale, executive director of the Department of Revenue. "We appear to have a strong business climate today that we didn't have in past recessions."

State officials also stressed that many of the zero-paying businesses are small. And even if businesses don't pay a corporate tax, they usually pay property, unemployment, sales and use taxes as well as annual filing fees. They employ tens of thousands of Floridians who also pay sales and property taxes.
......

Bush administration officials also argue that the low-tax culture is a key reason Florida continues to create jobs.
......

"Dead janitor insurance'

Corporate shelters designed to avoid federal taxes also cost Florida revenue.
......

Take Florida's third largest public company, Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. From 1993 through 1997, the Jacksonville-based supermarket chain used a tax shelter later deemed a "sham" by U.S. courts.

It took out life insurance - payable to the company - on more than 36,000 employees. The premiums, like any employee benefit, were considered a tax-deductible business expense.

Until Congress cracked down in 1996, dozens of businesses adopted a similar tactic: They bought insurance policies and collected when low-level employees died. The cash payments were also tax free.
......

Another firm that took out life insurance on its rank-and-file workers is Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer. It employs 76,400 Floridians and operates 192 stores and four distribution centers in the state.

"We saw COLI as a possible way to reduce our corporate income taxes which, in turn, could help us defray the rising cost of providing health care benefits to our people," Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams said in an e-mail. "As it turned out, the program did not work out well for us."

First, families of some Wal-Mart employees sued, saying the company purchased the policies without their knowledge and cashed in after their loved ones died. They want some of the proceeds.

Then, in a lawsuit filed in Delaware, Wal-Mart attorneys said the retail giant had settled with the IRS in August 2002 for a "substantial unanticipated tax liability ... under threat of litigation."

"It's especially bad when your employer has an interest in your early demise," said Scott Clearman, an attorney for the workers.
......

America's No. 1 store is also among the nation's largest taxpayers, paying $57-million in Florida property, unemployment and income tax last year. It declined to say how much of that was state corporate income tax.

But considering its $244.5-billion in sales and $12.7-billion in pretax income, Wal-Mart still pays a relatively small amount of income taxes to states.

Tax credits

Like many large corporations, Wal-Mart also takes advantage of state tax credits. Florida offers them to firms that create jobs in enterprise zones, which are rural or urban areas targeted for economic revitalization.

Businesses can also get credits if they do research, provide child care or contribute to charity. And while some states are cutting back on the use of credits, contending that the giveaways hurt other taxpayers, Florida keeps approving more.

With the help of Gov. Bush, Wal-Mart qualified for tax refunds of up to $2.88-million for building a grocery distribution center near the northeast Florida town of Macclenny.

In its application for the tax break, Wal-Mart played the Sunshine State against the Peach State: "In the event our application is denied, we would pursue to expand in Georgia. Our capital investment of $40-million and 600 jobs would be welcome in Camden County."

Florida won the bidding. "They (Florida) threw everything at Wal-Mart to make the project happen," a message in a state file says.

Wal-Mart said it already has received $540,000 for the Macclenny project and expects the rest over the next four years.

In 2001, Bush's office also agreed to a deal worth $539,000 after Wal-Mart opened a store in Florida City.

Although Florida is more than willing to sanction corporate handouts, state officials are less willing to discuss how they are used. Neither Florida nor Wal-Mart would say if it is getting the breaks on its corporate taxes, sales taxes or both.

Wal-Mart said it has created more than 1,200 jobs in exchange for all the credits, but it stressed that it doesn't rely on government subsidies. In the past three years, Wal-Mart said, it has added 15,000 people to its Florida payroll.

And. pray tell, how may of those jobs were janitors making $2 per day?

More on WalMart

Finally, some feel that Wal-Mart threatens our way of life:

Wal-Mart is powerful; Wal-Mart is the American worker's nightmare:

Low wages: Nearly half of Wal-Mart's workers earn less than the federal annual poverty income for a family of three - $15,300 per year.

Few benefits: 700,000 of the workers get no health care from Wal-Mart. The rest who do pay for it.

Little retirement: No retirement plan is provided for 35 percent of the workers. The other 65 percent are in the Wal-Mart profit sharing and 401(k) plans. And most of the investment is in Wal-Mart stock - shades of Enron.

Low wages, little health care and retirement - what else could be wrong? Thousands of workers are suing Wal-Mart because some managers force people to work unpaid overtime. Thousands more are suing for gender discrimination. Women comprise 70 percent of Wal-Mart's workers and many are suing over promotion and pay inequality.

WalMart vs. Women

Down for a while, but not out...

My internet connection to my blog site was down for the past 36 hours or so. Anyone who tried to connect from the Time Warner (roadrunner / brighthouse) network in the Tampa area, and perhaps beyond, was affected. Anyway, more posts coming soon, so stay tuned!

Wrong-headed wealthy white wimps: “Writs will watch over wretched and weak,” wink, wink...

“Trust us. We are rich and powerful and know what’s best for you. These are moral and legal issues and have nothing whatsoever to do with religion.”

Elaine Cassel begs to differ:

In one day, the federal government and the state of Florida stepped in to control the physical autonomy of a woman's body.

In Washington, the Senate passed to so-called "partial birth abortion" ban, a gruesomely named procedure for an equally gruesome process that is only used by doctors in the second and third trimester of pregnancy to save the life or health of the mother. The procedure is rarely used, and with good reason. For the doctor and the mother, the procedure is a heartwrenching process in which painful choices have been made.
......

Also yesterday, that crazy state of Florida enacted a law allowing Gov. Bush to order that feeding tubes be reinserted into 39-year-old Terri Schiavo, a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 13 years. Terry is not in a coma, and could live years longer, but to what end? Court-appointed doctors have reported that she has no cognitive abilities.

Her parents have objected to the removal of life-sustaining fluids, and their supporters have flooded the Internet with videos of Schiavo laughing and talking. When she did that is anyone's guess, but it certainly has not been in recent years. Doctors say any physical responses are reflexive and not intentional acts.
......

Baby brother Bush has learned well from his big brother how to be an imperial leader, denying his subjects civil liberties. Gov. Bush earlier this year ordered the appointment of a guardian ad litem for the fetus of a mentally retarded woman who was raped in a Florida home for adults. He wanted to be sure the woman did not have an abortion (she did not, nor did she ever indicate that she would), even though an abortion would have been entirely legal under Florida law. In a statement last night, Bush said he was not "playing God." Maybe he was just playing Machiavelli, then. He was definitely playing all-powerful-panderer to the political right.

Aside from the legal and ethical implications of the Florida and federal legislation, ask yourself this question: If these were men's lives we were dealing with, would the law be ordering what should be done with their bodies?

Troxler on Schiavo

From the SP Times:

Tuesday's banana republic mayhem was a spectacularly bad way to make new law. It was immature and intemperate. It was inconstant. It was law made up on the spot by a flock of clucking chickens jerking their heads in unison at loud noises and bright flashes of light.

The emergency act passed by the Legislature is not even a "law," in the sense of being a rule for all of society to live by. It was more of a whim, a dispensation - an exercise of raw power that lives for exactly 15 days and applies to exactly one case. No citizen of Florida before or after enjoys the same protection.

The Legislature simply waved a magic wand and claimed to grant Gov. Jeb Bush a power that he cannot possess. The governor is not king, you know, no matter how much they want him to be. Both he and the Legislature may exercise only the powers granted to them by the state Constitution.

Scripps deal another swampy mess?

Let me get this straight: Florida has no money for education, transportation, medical care for its citizens, or anything else, but Jeb is actually selling us on a deal which will guarantee 540 jobs in Florida, but not necessarily to be given to Floridians, for an average government subsidy of just $925,925 per job.($500 Million, 540 jobs...)

People who work full time in this state for minimum wage cannot put food on their own table, if they’re lucky enough to own a table and have a place to put it, and we are going to give the world’s richest research institute $500,000,000.00 to come and hang out for a few years?

All emphasis within quoted material is mine.

The beginning:

Gov. Jeb Bush boarded a plane July17 and headed to California with an audacious idea.

Behind closed doors, Bush told one of the world's largest private research companies that he was prepared to make a deal.

Open a facility in Florida, he said, and taxpayers will build you a brand new lab and spend millions of dollars on high tech equipment.

We'll even pay your employees' salaries for eight years, he said. The cost to taxpayers: at least $400-million.

The Scripps Research Institute hadn't seriously considered expanding, until they heard the offer. They quickly agreed.
......

But the Scripps deal stands out. The governor's economic development office could not cite another time Florida offered to pay the salaries for a company to move to the state.

Bush said the company's presence in Florida will ripple through the state's economy.

Scripps chose Palm Beach County for its new facility, and projected hiring 31 people the first year. The number would grow to 545 employees within seven years and 2,800 within 15.

The state projects another 3,700 jobs also would be created, such as research materials suppliers and waiters at local restaurants.

Bush expects other biotech companies to locate to Florida, creating 44,000 high-wage jobs.

The state of Florida is going to pay the salaries of the employees of a private research firm? Can anyone say “corporate welfare?”

Some lawmakers are trying to give the appearance of looking out for the public’s money, but in the end they will bend over and squeal excitedly as Jeb has his way with them.

The deal to lure a major biotechnology center to South Florida with a $310 million tax giveaway is drawing scrutiny from Republican legislators, who say they want more assurances and details before going along with Gov. Jeb Bush.

Under the Bush-brokered deal, taxpayers would pick up the cost of a new building, equipment and employees for a sister facility of the Scripps Research Institute, based in La Jolla, Calif.

In return, the institute is required only to move in.
....

Though the governor has been vague about the origins of the deal, the Herald on Wednesday learned that an influential Orlando attorney with ties to Bush first suggested the governor look into wooing Scripps.

Bush first visited the institute in July when he was in California for a fundraiser for that state's Republican party, a visit arranged by C. David Brown II, chairman of the Miami-based law firm Broad and Cassel. Brown, who raised $100,000 for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, was a member of Jeb Bush's campaign team, visited the governor's daughter, Noelle, while she was in jail on a drug charge and was recently named by Bush to the influential Council of 100, a business group that advises governors.

Aware of Bush's interest in luring a biotech firm, Brown suggested a contact at the Scripps Institute last spring.

Brown became involved with the negotiations when his client, British billionaire Joe Lewis, offered land near Orlando to Scripps before the institute opted for Palm Beach County.

Now, Broad & Cassel is representing the state in its negotiations with Palm Beach County and Scripps. On Wednesday, Brown downplayed his role. He said credit goes to the governor for helping change Florida's destiny.

''It changes us from being a tourism state,'' Brown said. ``It's like Harvard coming to Florida. It will change the way the business and scientific community views Florida.''

Brown is working with Bush's legal team and the governor Wednesday defended the use of outside counsel to seal the deal, noting ``This is a big deal. It's a half a billion dollar transaction and there's a short time frame to get it done.''

Brown's contract was not available Wednesday, but the governor's office said Brown ``offered his services at a discount rate.''

So, Brown first wanted to broker a deal to enrich his landowning buddy. I wonder who owned the company that owned the land that Palm Beach County just purchased to seal this deal?

If Florida gives the Scripps Research Institute $310-million to open a campus in Palm Beach County, should Florida residents get first crack at the job openings there? ......

Scripps executives said earlier in the week that the biomedical think tank from San Diego couldn't guarantee jobs for Floridians because its goal was to attract the best scientific talent available anywhere. The state would nevertheless benefit from the blossoming of biomedical businesses, and jobs, that would cluster around the new facility.

A site for the new campus was revealed Thursday, when Scripps chose to build on what is now a 1,920-acre citrus grove in unincorporated Palm Beach County. The site was selected over several other options nearby.

Under the land deal, Palm Beach County will pay Lantana Farm Associates Inc. of Lake Worth $30,000 per acre, or $57.6-million, county administrator Bob Weisman said. Scripps will occupy just 100 acres of the tract. The remainder would be set aside for biotech companies, universities, venture capitalists and others that seek to do business with Scripps and for water-treatment facilities and other infrastructure.

Allen Zech, head of the agricultural section at the Palm Beach County property appraiser's office, said there is no easy way to tell whether the county got a good price for the land. Few tracts of that size, type and location have been sold in recent years.

In other developments Thursday, Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said he has asked an independent economist to review the Bush administration's claim that a Scripps deal would directly or indirectly create 50,000 new jobs in Palm Beach County by 2019. That estimate, which administration officials describe as conservative, was derived by Tony Villamil and Robert Cruz of the Washington Economics Group of Coral Gables. Villamil is chief of Bush's council of economic advisers and his former director of trade, tourism and economic development.

"Is it conservative, or highly speculative?" Gelber said in an interview. "Euphoria is a wonderful thing, but you never want to base a purchase on it."

Also Thursday, the Miami Herald reported that C. David Brown II, chairman of Orlando's Broad & Cassell law firm, was the person who first suggested last spring that Bush approach Scripps about a deal. The newspaper said the Bush administration has now tapped Broad & Cassell to handle its negotiations with Scripps. A Broad & Cassell spokeswoman said Brown was not immediately available for comment.

Uh, the property appraiser says he really can’t tell if that land was acquired at a fair price, cause, uh, you know, it’s really hard to appraise the value of something. It seems that this type of confusion is contagious:

...the demand for a quick decision left other commissioners less enthusiastic. Because Scripps kept its plans under wraps until 10 days ago, Commissioner Addie Greene feels she's being rushed without being given enough information. She was the only commissioner to vote against the proposal.

"I'm still lost as to why this is such a grand opportunity for Palm Beach County because I have not been informed," Greene said.

Lack of information also bothered environmentalist Cynthia Plockelmann.

"I think there's a lack of sunshine. I am appalled some commissioners were informed (and) others not. I don't think there's nearly enough detail as to expenses," Plockelmann said.

Commission chairwoman Karen Marcus (pictured, right) agreed they didn't have enough specifics, but still voted to spend the money.

"It causes you to pause with this kind of money we're investing, but if we didn't take steps today, we'd never know," Marcus said. (ed.note: Marcus is obviously confused, but at least she’s curious! $210 million is a small price to pay if the other option is not knowing!)
......

Scripps has promised to create 540 jobs over seven years and said it will be a magnet to biotechnical companies who will want to be near the research facility.
......

The deal is still contingent upon Gov. Jeb Bush's commitment to add $310 million to buy Scripps new equipment. That could come out of a special session of the Legislature as early as next week, putting the project on the fast track toward moving into a temporary facility by midsummer.

State leaders expect Scripps, the country's leading nonprofit biomedical research institute, will help create 6,000 new jobs, in addition to the 540 jobs it promised Palm Beach County. The institute, based in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, is known for groundbreaking work in leukemia, ovarian cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, Alzheimer's disease and AIDS. It has become internationally recognized for research into immunology, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases and synthetic vaccine development.

Scripps, established in 1924 through a gift from philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, employs 2,900 people in La Jolla and is the largest institute funded by the National Institutes of Health. It is the home of three Nobel laureates.

Smells like Disney...

But Disney, at least, had bought its own land on which it would spend fortunes of its own money. Scripps brings to the feast no dowry other than a good reputation. For the first time, the public is expected to provide not only the land, not only the buildings, but also salaries sufficient for seven years. There is no precedent for that.

There is no guarantee that Scripps will stay even seven years, let alone longer. The governor's hastily drafted legislation provides for a share of Scripps' net - not gross - income, but only begining in 2011, after it has drawn down the state's advance.
......

Granted, the deal could be good, very good, for Florida. But this raises the question of why Bush is not equally eager to invest equivalently in improving Florida's educational system, especially its colleges and universities.

Every survey of business leaders points to education as more important than any other factor, including taxes, in attracting and keeping industry. If I were a legislator, I'd tell the governor to bring now, not later, his plans for a stable funding source for higher education, and put them on the table right beside the Scripps deal.

Good idea, but that’s not very likely to happen. The train rolls on:

Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday made his case to Florida lawmakers for spending $310-million to lure the world's largest private research center to Florida, but skeptical senators weren't in a buying mood.

In an unusual joint session of the Legislature, Bush said he supports measures to ensure that the money is well-spent, but warned lawmakers not to micromanage a venture that could push Florida to the forefront of biomedical research.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build an economic engine with the power to drive this state forward," Bush told lawmakers. Florida can create prosperity for future generations, Bush said, "or we can forfeit our dream to those bold enough to build it."
......

If any lawmakers oppose the idea of spending public money on a private company, they weren't evident. Instead, the focus was on accountability.

But the public was left largely in the dark as the session began. A House bill did not surface, and Bush expanded the five-day session's agenda to include an exemption from public records laws for "certain information" on the Scripps deal.
......

During the joint session with Bush, Democrats asked the toughest questions.

Sen. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, said it was "fairly unprecedented" for an out-of-state business not to put up its own money. Bush rejected that.

"It is a not-for-profit. It is not there to make money. It's there to make discoveries," Bush said.

Bush also said Floridians should not receive preferential treatment in jobs or programs at Scripps Florida. "It should be completely open," Bush said.

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What has America done for me lately, that big plot of land shared by 280,000,000 head trips, some minute percentage of which are somewhat similar to my own in some small way, but otherwise born to be programmed, propagandized, brain-washed about how god wanted us: manifest by god and destined by god to take god's country and everything in it, and every one, and do with them what we will?

Maybe I'd fight for the old neighborhood where I grew up. Or maybe I'd die to protect the 'hood. But even NYC is too big and complex -- 8,000,000 head trips. Might as well be 280,000,000 or 280 for all that "united we stand" bullshit.

Swamp sale so sweet

You know, when this thing was announced, during the Governor’s race, it seemed awful fishy, and now things are really starting to stink...

The investigative arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior has begun an inquiry into the Bush administration's $120 million buyout of oil rights in the western Everglades.

The deal was intended to thwart a massive oil-drilling plan by the Collier family of southwest Florida, which held the mineral rights at Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge and Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge. When the buyout was announced last year at a White House news conference, environmentalists gave the administration a rare round of applause in a crucial state for the 2004 election.

But now the Interior Department's Inspector General's Office has begun reviewing the transaction. The Inspector General's Office would not comment. But Hugh Vickery, spokesman for the Interior Department, said the inquiry focused on how the administration arrived at the $120 million price.

"We can confirm that the inspector general has told the department that it is initiating an inquiry into the valuation process used for the Collier deal," he said. "We're confident that the process used in reaching the valuation of those resources was good."

Bad timing

The buyout still has not closed, and the inquiry comes at the worst time for its prospects. The administration had requested a $40 million installment in next year's budget, but neither the House nor the Senate put the money in their spending bills. While the Florida delegation had planned to fight for the money, the inspector general's review could make it difficult for them to press their case.

"If there were some sort of inquiry going on, I would think that people would want to see how that comes out before they appropriate funds," said Jill Greenberg, spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida.

And now that the federal investigatoin has held up the money, the Colliers are attempting to extort as much as they can:

A federal investigation that has stalled an Everglades buyout has a rich Florida pioneer family thinking about reviving plans for exploratory oil and gas drilling on some of the nation's most sensitive land.

The Bush administration's $120 million purchase of mineral rights on 390,396 acres of federally owned land in the historic Everglades was intended to halt drilling planned by the Collier family, for whom Collier County is named.

The Bush administration asked for a $40 million down payment, but House and Senate appropriations committees are not expected to put the money into the current spending bill while the Interior Department's inspector general conducts an investigation.

Bob Duncan, general manager of Collier Resources Co., said the family would ''look at its options'' if no money is forthcoming.

''We firmly believe there's additional oil to be found. We have our permits in with the National Park Service, so clearly that's one of the alternatives,'' he said.

Mary Munson, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, said the Colliers should be patient with the process.

''The Colliers know the fiscal climate,'' she said. ``The threat to drill if they do not get this huge payout borders on extortion.''

Summing things up:

A year ago, New Times probed the Bush administration's planned $120 million buyout of mineral rights in the Big Cypress National Preserve from the wealthy Collier family, whose operation is based on Florida's west coast ("Big Cypress Buyout," September 12, 2002). The deal, announced in May 2002 on the White House lawn by the president and little brother Jebbie, was also to include to-be-determined tax breaks that could have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though New Times revealed that the feds ignored staff estimates that the mineral rights were worth only $5 million to $20 million, there was little response.

So why did the inspector general of the Department of Interior just recently decide to probe the deal, as the Sun-Sentinel disclosed last week? The IG won't say a word about the inquiry, but a DOI insider has a pretty good idea of what sparked it. "There's blood in the water," the source says of the growing criticism of the White House. "It's near election time, and the sharks are circling. A lot of people are worried about what this administration is doing."

If it chooses, the IG's office can easily verify that the inflated valuation is a waste of taxpayer money. The question the IG investigators should be asking, however, is this: Did DOI higher-ups use that federal agency to aid Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his reelection bid against challengers Bill McBride and Janet Reno?

Coming as it did during the thick of the campaign, the proposal certainly raised eyebrows. "The timing with the Bush administration -- that energy-happy, let's-drill-everywhere administration -- was certainly very suspect," says Robin Rorapaugh, who at the time was McBride's campaign manager. "The Bush White House and Interior Department are not an environmentally friendly organization. The deal was counter to what that administration is usually doing. [The announcement] was there to help his brother."

Even the governor hinted as much at the time. "Whenever there is a convergence of good politics and good public policy, I don't think we should be ashamed about it," he declared at the White House.

The Collier family has been a major landowner in South Florida since 1921, when Barron Gift Collier bought 1.25 million acres of swampland. His heirs sold almost 700,000 acres of Everglades property to the federal government during the '70s and '80s, much of which now makes up the Big Cypress. The Colliers retained the mineral rights, however.

The family has tried to wring as much as it can from its holdings, including an attempt to trade them for surplus military bases in California and Florida in 1996. At that time, the DOI's Minerals Management Service in New Orleans determined that the rights were worth $230 million to $430 million. The deal died, though, says the DOI source, because the appraisal was so far-fetched that it couldn't pass the "red-face test." In 1999, the Colliers tried to swap the mineral rights for property at the Homestead Air Force Base, but by then, DOI staff had determined they were worth $5 million to $20 million.
......

Early this year, Sen. Bob Graham reacted angrily when the Bush administration tried to slip a $40 million down payment for the Colliers into a 2003 appropriations bill without congressional scrutiny. It was subsequently withdrawn.

Bush lied; 336 Americans and thousands of Iraqis died (so far)

Yahoo! News - U.S. 'Peace Toll' in Iraq Passes 100 Combat Deaths

When the 100th U.S. soldier died in combat since President Bush (news - web sites) declared victory in Iraq (news - web sites) nearly six months ago, the grim statistic laid bare how deadly Iraq has become even after the war.

It also marked the biggest U.S. combat loss in a peacekeeping operation since an ill-fated intervention in the Lebanon conflict 20 years ago. That involvement ended in 1983 after an explosive-laden truck rammed into a U.S. Marines Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 servicemen.

Somalia, Kosovo, Panama, Grenada, Afghanistan (news - web sites) and the first Gulf war (news - web sites), in which 147 Americans died, have not taken the overall toll on American lives that the present Iraq conflict has exacted.

As well as the 101 soldiers who have died in combat since the war was formally declared over by Bush on May 1, another 97 have died in so-called non-hostile action -- accidents, friendly fire, illness and suicides.

In the war itself, 115 U.S. troops died in combat and 23 in non-hostile actions, making a total of 336 dead for U.S. forces since they invaded March 20.

Jeb plan: impregnate Schiavo, get court order to save fetus?

Jeb Bush is looking for ways to interfere with a patient’s stated wish to die. Terry Schiavo is finally getting her wish. She has been in a coma for years, and lawyers have been getting rich during the protracted court fights between her husband, who wants to honor her wish not to be artificially kept alive, and her parents, who want to hire a nurse to work Terry’s jaws and force food down her throat:

After Lazzara's ruling, Michael Schiavo smiled and hugged one of his attorneys, Deborah Bushnell, as members of the Schindler family left court through a back door. Michael Schiavo declined to talk with reporters.

Another of Mr. Schiavo's attorneys, George Felos, told reporters, "I think this is a big step, a very big step."

The Schindlers had filed the federal lawsuit against Michael Schiavo last month alleging a conspiracy between him and Greer to end Mrs. Schiavo's life.

The Schindlers contend their daughter can survive the removal of the feeding tube if she undergoes therapy that they argue would allow her to regain the ability to take in food and water orally.

Felos said that's impossible, and Greer had earlier ruled against allowing such therapy.

"An injunction that says don't remove the tube until she can eat on her own is like saying don't remove the tube until she can walk around the block," Felos said. "It's never going to happen."

Mrs. Schiavo, 39, has been in a persistent vegetative state for 13 years after her heart stopped from what her doctors believe was a potassium imbalance.

Friday's hearing was viewed with great optimism by some of the Schindlers' supporters, especially after Gov. Jeb Bush filed a friend of the court brief opposing the removal of the feeding tube.

Jeb, or OFFaL (Our Feckless FloridA Leader), just can’t keep his government from groping people’s bodies. He’s searching high and low right now for a way to extend the family’s suffering to cynically soothe some sorry slobs salivating over the slim chance of setting a precedent that might someday be used to further erode a woman’s right to an abortion.

Terri Schiavo's weary parents kept vigil by their oldest child Thursday as they awaited word from the governor on a strategy to save her.

Activists pressuring Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene submitted to the governor's office several legal opinions from lawyers telling Bush he has the constitutional right to force doctors to resume feeding Mrs. Schiavo.

Late in the day, Bush told reporters that his lawyers were still working on a solution. But he admitted they have found nothing.
......

Legal experts, meanwhile, expressed doubt that Bush has any option to force doctors to reinsert the feeding tube removed from Mrs. Schiavo's stomach at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

"In a nutshell, it really isn't the governor's official business," said University of Florida law professor Joseph W. Little. "There is absolutely nothing in the state constitution that gives him authority in this matter or a duty to do anything about it."

Professor Mike Allen, who teaches constitutional law at the Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, said a separation of powers prevents the governor's intervention.

"Maybe my view is a bit jaded," Allen said. "But I suspect a good portion of this is a public relations effort by the governor."

A little Jeb history:
BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering: Jeb does his part to strip women of rights
BlogWood: Norwood's Fair and Balanced Nattering: MJ Melone Gets it

GA E-voting problems

Here is an excellent article on electronic voting machines. Unfortunately, we have to get this information from Europe, as the topic is apparently not important enough for papers in the US to cover.

It would be very simple to solve this problem permanently: all we need is a hard copy, a print out which the voter can look at to confirm her vote, and which she can then deposit in an old fashioned ballot box. These hard copies could be used to spot check the accuracy of the electronic tabulations and could also be used in a recount. Electronic voting machines are all designed around a standard PC. Adding a printer can not be too difficult, whether the manufacturers will admit it or not, and it creates a perfect audit trail.

Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between nine and 11 points. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.

Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points.
......

There were also big, puzzling swings in partisan loyalties in different parts of the state. In 58 counties, the vote was broadly in line with the primary election. In 27 counties in Republican-dominated north Georgia, however, Max Cleland unaccountably scored 14 percentage points higher than he had in the primaries. And in 74 counties in the Democrat south, Saxby Chambliss garnered a whopping 22 points more for the Republicans than the party as a whole had won less than three months earlier.

Now, weird things like this do occasionally occur in elections, and the figures, on their own, are not proof of anything except statistical anomalies worthy of further study. But in Georgia there was an extra reason to be suspicious. Last November, the state became the first in the country to conduct an election entirely with touchscreen voting machines, after lavishing $54m (£33m) on a new system that promised to deliver the securest, most up-to-date, most voter-friendly election in the history of the republic. The machines, however, turned out to be anything but reliable. With academic studies showing the Georgia touchscreens to be poorly programmed, full of security holes and prone to tampering, and with thousands of similar machines from different companies being introduced at high speed across the country, computer voting may, in fact, be US democracy's own 21st-century nightmare.

In many Georgia counties last November, the machines froze up, causing long delays as technicians tried to reboot them. In heavily Democratic Fulton County, in downtown Atlanta, 67 memory cards from the voting machines went missing, delaying certification of the results there for 10 days. In neighbouring DeKalb County, 10 memory cards were unaccounted for; they were later recovered from terminals that had supposedly broken down and been taken out of service.

It is still unclear exactly how results from these missing cards were tabulated, or if they were counted at all. And we will probably never know, for a highly disturbing reason. The vote count was not conducted by state elections officials, but by the private company that sold Georgia the voting machines in the first place, under a strict trade-secrecy contract that made it not only difficult but actually illegal - on pain of stiff criminal penalties - for the state to touch the equipment or examine the proprietary software to ensure the machines worked properly. There was not even a paper trail to follow up. The machines were fitted with thermal printing devices that could theoretically provide a written record of voters' choices, but these were not activated. Consequently, recounts were impossible. Had Diebold Inc, the manufacturer, been asked to review the votes, all it could have done was programme the computers to spit out the same data as before, flawed or not.

Astonishingly, these are the terms under which America's top three computer voting machine manufacturers - Diebold, Sequoia and Election Systems and Software (ES&S) - have sold their products to election officials around the country. Far from questioning the need for rigid trade secrecy and the absence of a paper record, secretaries of state and their technical advisers - anxious to banish memories of the hanging chad fiasco and other associated disasters in the 2000 presidential recount in Florida - have, for the most part, welcomed the touchscreen voting machines as a technological miracle solution.

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Today on MorningWood

Today on MorningWood 4 to 6AM WMNF 88.5 FM, Tampa, or streaming at wmnf.org. Listener sponsored community radio.

First, I’d like to thank everyone who called in last week and pledged their support to the station during marathon. The station raised enough dough to keep broadcasting for another 6 months, and even a little extra for our new building. Thank You!

Well, if you’re a regular MorningWoodster, you know that I often take cues from current events when planning a show. The past coupla weeks Tigers and other jungle animals have dominated the news. First, Roy, of Ziegfried and Roy, was mauled by one of their big cats. Then, in New York City, police found a full grown tiger in a public housing apartment complex. They were tipped off by suspicious hospital workers who had treated the owner’s “dog” bites.

Finally, just a couple of days ago, the Bush administration proposed relaxing import rules on endangered species. They have somehow convinced themselves that killing these animals is the only way to save them.

With all this in mind, I present to you the Jungle edition of MorningWood!

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Bush calls for Orwellian changes in conservation rules

A timely article I just spotted From Today's Tampa Tribune, but it inexplicably fails to mention Bush's rules change proposal which will make the trade in these species even more profitable and common.

The following essay is not off-topic: it mentions Niger, and Niger has big game. So I’m gonna read it. Here’s a smattering.
Ben Tripp: CIA FU!

Bush's people, and I use the word 'people' loosely, decided to make the CIA take the fall for the one canard out of several thousand that a slumbering nation happened to catch on its way into the swamps of the Mesopotamian desert in the name of anti-terrorism. This canard also happened to be one of the few that the CIA specifically suggested Bush not espouse as an excuse for his little camping trip to hell, so we have a painful insult/injury compound already, vis-à-vis the CIA. Shortly thereafter, same Bush people, in a moment of good-natured backstabbing retribution, exposed one of the CIA's own assets, and by extension all the other assets to which she can be connected by a reasonably bright foreign intelligence agency with access to a telephone. I'm just guessing here, but it seems to me that an agency willing to overthrow the government of Guatemala in the name of banana imports ought to have no problem saying "screw you right back" to a bunch of venal, inbred frat boys blundering their way through their last terms in public office.

60,000 Children left behind

From teh SP Times:

Tammey Amodea's baby needs a heart valve replacement. So the Cape Coral real estate agent is busy organizing fundraisers to pay for the operations her child is going to need.

Amodea has to scramble because she doesn't have health coverage from her employer and state lawmakers froze enrollment to Florida KidCare, the state's programs for children in poor and working families that can't afford health insurance.

The enrollment caps took effect in July. By the end of September, the waiting list had grown to nearly 60,000 children. And there are a lot of children in front of Amodea's 14-month-old son Dakota - about 13,000, she said.

Florida KidCare consists of four different programs. Enrollment in Medicaid, the oldest and largest program under the KidCare umbrella, remains open. Federal law requires that Medicaid serve everyone who is eligible and signs up.

Nearly 1.7-million children - more than a quarter of the children in Florida - get their health care from Medicaid.

But the state has the power to limit services in the other three programs that make up Florida KidCare, and lawmakers took that step this spring to save money as they struggled to balance a $53-billion budget.

Fuckin' A - OK?

From the Austin American Statesman:

Let's say you're the singer for this hugely internationally famous pop band about to win a major award in front of millions, and you'd like to make the occasion special by saying a very naughty word that means what people do for fun and procreation -- right there on live broadcast TV.

Well, go right ahead. U2 singer Bono got away with it at the Golden Globe Awards back in January. The Parents Television Council and other organizations that make it their business to monitor what your kids hear complained to the Federal Communications Commission, which ruled without fanfare Friday that it's OK to use that word (for which we will substitute "feep") as long as you're not being literal. Follow the logical bouncing ball: You can say "feep" or "feeping" if you don't really mean "to feep."

All of which Bob Peters finds distressing. Peters is president of the National Obscenity Law Center, which is a project of Morality in Media, in Washington.

According to the ruling, quoting from the FCC's Indecency Policy Statement, indecent material "must describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities."

"The word . . . may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory activities," FCC enforcement bureau chief David Solomon wrote in the ruling. "Rather, the performer used the word . . . as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation."

By this logic, Peters notes, Howard Stern could go on his radio show and call someone a cornshucker 68 times -- so long as he meant it as an insult and not as a description of a what a person might actually do.

Steve Gilliard on Junkie Rush

From Steve Gilliard's News Blog: (scroll down to the Rush post)

As my dad would say: yeah, right.

The pills aren't addictive, you are a junkie and instead of getting medical treatment when you started to take more dope, you went to the streets. Back surgery rarely works, and a lot of it was caused by you being fat. If you had lost the weight, the pressure on your back would have lessened.

Turned out to be? OxyContin says on the bottle it is addictive.

Junkies are three things: liars, hypocrites and sneaks. You managed to be all three and drag down other people in your dope binge.

Why should you be on the street when Robert Downey Jr. was locked up for being a junkie?

Jimbo nominated for White House conservation post

From The Washington Post:

The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.

Giving Americans access to endangered animals, officials said, would feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts and trophies, and generate profits that would allow poor nations to pay for conservation of the remaining animals and their habitat.

This and other proposals that pursue conservation through trade would, for example, open the door for American trophy hunters to kill the endangered straight-horned markhor in Pakistan; license the pet industry to import the blue fronted Amazon parrot from Argentina; permit the capture of endangered Asian elephants for U.S. circuses and zoos; and partially resume the trade in African ivory.

From The Mexican Staring Frog of Sri Lanka South Park episode, Jimbo and Ned host a public access show:

[Huntin' & Killin']

TV Announcer:

And now back to hunting and killing with South Park's favorite hunters, Jimbo and Ned.

Jimbo:

I'm Jimbo Kerny and this is here is Ned. Say hi Ned.

Ned:

Nnnhi Ned.

Jimbo laughs

Jimbo:

Now isn't that great? We have a terrific show for you today. We're gonna kill some elk and we're gonna kill mountain goats. Now the new law passed by Colorado legislature which Ned and I call pussy law #4 states that we can no longer kill animals in defense. In otherwords our old line of "It's coming right for us"

Ned:

It's coming right for us.

Screen says in white letters "Pussy Law #4: No animal shall be harmed, even in self defense, unlesss specific license and season is in order. Self defense can only be justified by extreme, provable peril and or documented visible bodily harm."

Jimbo:

No longer works. So now we only kill animals to quote "Thin out their numbers". If we don't hunt, these animals will grow to big in their number and they won't have enough food. So you see, we have to kill animals, or else they'll die.

Power hungry racist Republicans redraw Texas

From the Washington Post:

Texas Republican leaders unveiled a congressional redistricting plan yesterday that Democrats characterized as an illegal attempt to solidify GOP control of the U.S. House by diluting the political influence of minority voters while handing Republicans at least seven more seats in Congress. ......

"The map is clearly illegal and will be struck down by the courts," said Rep. Martin Frost (D-Tex.), one of seven Democrats whose chances of reelection would be endangered under the new district lines. "I don't know what the Justice Department will do, but if they play it straight they'll knock it down, too."

Republicans said they are confident the redrawn district lines can withstand the expected legal challenge. "This has been thoroughly reviewed by several sets of lawyers, and we think it fully complies with the Voting Rights Act," said David Beckwith, spokesman for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the presiding office of the state Senate.
......

According to an analysis by Frost's staff, the GOP plan would "disenfranchise" more than 2.1 million black and Hispanic voters by "packing" them into a handful of districts and diluting their influence in other districts.
......

Frost said that under the GOP plan, his district around Fort Worth would be "chopped into five pieces," and that black voters in the district would be "attached as a tail to [another] district that runs all the way north to the Oklahoma line. There is no way the courts will uphold that."

A Republican official did not dispute the purpose of the new redistricting plan. "We're not going to get them all, but it puts a number of them behind the eight ball," he said of the Democrats. "Virtually every Anglo Democrat is going to have a rough time."

All of the most endangered Democrats are white. State Rep. Garnet Coleman, a black Democrat from Houston, called the Republican plan "racist" and said that its central purpose is the elimination of elected white Democrats.

"That is the target, because they want to change the face of the Democratic Party to black and brown so they can continue to run racist innuendo in their campaigns," he said. "It is the elimination of [Texas] Anglo Democrats in the U.S. Congress."

Council caves, trees lost

The Tampa City Council has spread its legs and invited the construction industry to use it hard and then pave over its hole. Having talked for months about tightening Tampa’s tree ordinance and making fines large and enforceable enough to actually save some trees, the Council yesterday decided to do nothing. Well, not quite nothing... the Council decided to speed up the permitting process so that building and tree killing can commence in a streamlined fashion. This should be good news for all those downtrodden South Tampa homeowner types who up to this point have been forced to live in a virtual, albeit temporary, hell for weeks on end as they wait for word from the City as to whether or not they will be allowed to kill their 200 year old Oaks to make way for their new zero-lotline 25,000 square feet Barbie Dream House. From The Tampa Tribune:

Home builders Wednesday chipped away at plans to toughen Tampa's tree protection rules.

In fact, by the end of a two-hour meeting, city leaders had switched from considering tougher protection for trees protections to agreeing to speed up permits needed to build new homes.

For weeks, Tampa City Council members talked about toughening the rules so builders would not consider fines for toppling protected trees just part of the cost of doing business.

But at a council workshop Wednesday, a group of about 10 builders told city officials that new rules would end up costing property owners more money.

Having to build around protected trees makes land less valuable, builder John Sample said.

``We are talking about these trees as if they are an endangered species,'' said Sample, who advocates getting rid of all city tree protection rules. ``We have got a dense urban forest, and it's not going anywhere.''

Council Chairwoman Linda Saul- Sena agreed to back off on consideration of tougher rules and focus on better enforcement of existing rules. She also assured the builders the city would work to speed the approval of construction plans, a process officials said takes about four weeks.

``We don't want to hold you guys up,'' Saul-Sena she told the builders.

DeLay squashes citizen calls

From Salon.com, we learn that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is squashing citizens’ attempts to contact him and make their voices heard. (You’ll need a free day pass to view the entire Salon article that is linked above and excerpted below.)

The progressive Internet organizing group MoveOn.org has reduced two pillars of the right-wing establishment to pulling petulant phone pranks. On Tuesday, the office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, angry that MoveOn members were wasting the staff's time with complaints about DeLay's handling of a House resolution on FCC regulation, started forwarding its phone calls to MoveOn organizer Eli Pariser's cellphone. The day before, Bob McManus, the New York Post's opinion-page editor, published MoveOn's Noah Winer's phone number in the headline of his Monday column and urged readers to "swarm" him.

McManus refers to MoveOn as "cyberbullies" and writes that Winer -- whose name he spells "Weiner" -- "oozes annoying self-righteousness."

MoveOn's phone wars began with two e-mails the group sent to its members. The first was about the conservative columnist Robert Novak...

Winer sent an e-mail to MoveOn members, urging them to call Novak's bosses at the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Post and CNN and demand that the conservative columnist be fired for endangering national security -- and "to remain polite and professional" while doing so.

The second MoveOn message, sent on Tuesday morning, was about DeLay's efforts to block a vote on a resolution that would roll back the Federal Communications Commission vote to loosen media ownership rules. ... DeLay is working with the White House to preserve the FCC's attempt at deregulation. Thus he and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., are refusing to bring the resolution to the House floor. MoveOn e-mailed its members urging them to contact DeLay and Hastert and ask them to allow a vote.

Neither of these efforts are novel. Advocacy groups constantly ask members to contact their government representatives, and organizations on both the right and left frequently mount campaigns to pressure the media to reflect their views.

Pariser is more surprised by DeLay's stunt, not because he expects better from the former Texas bug-killer, but because, as he says, "This is the guy who's the majority leader. He has a responsibility not just to members of Congress, but to the whole country."

DeLay's office doesn't see it that way. As a MoveOn member wrote in an e-mail to Pariser, "I was also able to reach Rep. DeLay's office. There, I was interrupted in the middle of my first sentence, asked if this was about the FCC, and placed on hold. After a few seconds someone else answered and I learned that Rep. DeLay's office had forwarded my call to MoveOn.org. Evidently, they have no interest in the opinions of a citizen." Pariser has since changed the message on his cellphone, urging callers to try DeLay again.

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Must Reading: Electronic voting WILL lead to fraud!

The Agonist ties together recent reports on the flaws inherent in proprietary paperless electronic voting systems.

Part 1

Part 2

With the emergence of paperless billing and online banking, many of us save considerable effort, time and money every month. The transition to digital information has gone well beyond paying bills or taxes, and booking airline flights. Virtually all aspects of our lives are affected. Not surprisingly, the same technological shift has been occurring in the field of voting machines, accelerated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed by Congress at the end of 2002.

No paper trail.

While differing in implementation, these systems share a crucial feature: all information about the votes is stored exclusively in digital format. The crucial difference from more traditional voting systems (e.g., punch card and optical scan machines) is that those systems keep the original vote in a physical form (usually paper) that can be directly verified by the voter. This "paper trail" can later be used during a recount, if the need were to arise.

A recount is generally possible with Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, but what is recounted is simply what the machine recorded in the first place and this can be quite different from the intended vote.

Discrepancies arise through a number of factors, ranging from machine malfunction to malicious tampering with its software. Without the hard-copy redundancy offered by traditional voting systems, performing an independent audit is virtually impossible.

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Are these guys on Prozac? Senate Panel Backs Bill to Give Tax Windfall to Eli Lilley, HP

Here’s a concise version of the NY Times article:

American corporations that have deferred taxes for years on the profits they made overseas could be in line for a huge windfall from Congress.

Hoping to bring more investment to the United States, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill on Wednesday that would give a one-time tax holiday to companies that have accumulated as much as $400 billion in foreign profits on which they have yet to pay American taxes.

The Senate bill, which is part of a much broader bill to overhaul laws on international corporate taxation, would let companies bring those profits back and pay a tax rate of 5.25 percent.

But many tax experts, including top tax officials in the Bush administration, say the move would be a mistake because it would validate the strategies of companies that spent years sheltering the overseas profits.

"The company that left Louisiana is going to pay a 5 percent tax on the widgets they make overseas, and the company that stayed in Louisiana is going to pay a 35 percent tax," said Senator John B. Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana. "If that isn't an incentive to leave, I don't know what is."

Critics also warn that there is no guarantee that the companies will invest their repatriated profits in new factories or larger work forces. Indeed, Republican lawmakers defeated an amendment offered by Mr. Breaux on Wednesday that would have required companies to reinvest their foreign profits in things like new equipment.

Pamela F. Olson, assistant secretary of the Treasury in charge of tax policy, told lawmakers Wednesday that she was skeptical about the bill's benefits and warned that it could "undermine taxpayers' perception of the fairness of the tax system."

The biggest beneficiaries of the legislation would be technology companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel as well as pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Eli Lilly.

Hewlett, which has been one of the bill's most visible supporters, says it has accumulated $14.5 billion in foreign earnings and has kept them outside the country, in part to avoid paying the American corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

Eli Lilly, whose products include the antidepressant Prozac, says it has $8 billion in untaxed overseas profits. Intel, another big supporter of the legislation, says it has deferred taxes on $6.3 billion of foreign income.

dead prez arrested for breathing

Members and supporters of the politically-charged rap group dead prez (dpz), who were arrested Saturday afternoon in Crown Heights, allege the incident was police harassment. Clayton Gavin, a/k/a Sticman, one half of the controversial rap duo, his DJ, Umi Bem Niilampti, and two other associates, Samuel Murrain, a/k/a Ness, and Harris DeJesus, a/k/a D-Don, were in the midst of a photo shoot when they were detained for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among other charges, after refusing to show identification when queried by police. The cases against all but one of the defendants have already been dismissed.

According to Rosa Clemente, a dpz spokesperson and part of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), at around 3:30 p.m., the group members were posing for a photographer in front of a Dean Street and Bedford Avenue building when they were approached by two female cops demanding their identification. In response, the group told the officers they were guests of a friend who lived at the address, and asked the reason for the ID request. Clemente says the police persisted, saying, "'What’s the problem, just show us ID,'" and that the rappers asked, "'For what? Why do we have to show you ID? There’s hundreds of people on this block, you ain’t asking them for ID.'"

dead prez claim that after this exchange the officers called for backup, more police arrived and the group was surrounded. Sticman says he repeatedly asked if he was under arrest, was told that he was not, but wasn’t allowed to leave or continue his work. "I was harassed and attacked by the police in my neighborhood," Sticman told the Voice. "I was never told anything about being under arrest. . . . There were no complaints. I wasn’t violating any laws other than the law of being black and being outside."
......

(MXGM attorney and dpz co-counsel Kamau Karl) Franklin says his clients were within their rights to refuse to give IDs without being given a reason. "There is no pass law," says Franklin referring to the one-time law in South Africa requiring all blacks to carry state-issued passes to enter urban areas. "They are not required to give ID [when] someone just walks up to them and demands ID, even if it’s a police officer. We have no basis for the initial stop."

Pay attention to that last point, because there is a huge misconception in this country around the need to carry identification. See, kids are taught that it is a good thing to carry proper ID, “just in case” a situation arises in which it is needed.

This feel-good anal behavior is soon reinforced and over-simplified to the point that many, maybe most people, believe that they “must” carry ID on them at all times. I say over-simplified because I think a lot of this false assumption stems from the requirement to carry one’s driver’s license whenever one is behind the wheel of a car.

So, a driver is required to carry ID, in the form of a driver’s license, but that’s where it ends. If you are not suspected of breaking any laws, the police have absolutely no right to demand identification.

Unless you’re a black revolutionary artist, in which case you’re lucky Ashcroft’s fascist minions haven’t treated you to a nice little trip to Miniluv:

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

Constitution hating fascist named to W's campaign

From the SP Times:

Brett Doster was not about to let protesters disrupt a presidential visit.

So when three sign-toting demonstrators showed up at the New York Yankees' Legends Field two years ago, Doster asked police to remove them, team officials said.

Police complied. The charges were later dropped, and the protesters are suing the city for violating their First Amendment rights.

The protestres should win, too, since this was a public event on public property and only people protesting against Bush were targeted for removal.

This is a good example of how the Republicans reward bullying and illegal behavior on the part of their operatives.

MacDill slush fund investigated

Worldandnation: Defense says it didn't deceive

Pentagon officials denied Tuesday that they had instructed the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa to inflate budget proposals last year to hide $20-million from Congress.

In response to a series of questions by House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said it is not Pentagon policy to deceive Congress.

"We do not do that kind of thing in a sleight-of-hand way," said Zakheim, who fielded Young's questions at the request of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who sat at his side. "Neither I nor my deputy, nor his deputy, instructed anybody to hide from the staff anything."

But in an e-mail dated Feb. 11, 2002, Elaine Kingston, the Special Operations comptroller, told colleagues she had received a call from Zakheim's office asking if the command could "park" $40-million in research and development funds in its budget for fiscal year 2003, which ended Tuesday.

"They needed an answer in five minutes," she wrote, without identifying the caller who contacted her office. "The agency they had it parked with had a problem and couldn't do it."

According to defense officials and documents obtained by the St. Petersburg Times, Special Operations officials divided $20-million among six projects so the money would not attract attention. They also instructed their own budget analysts not to mention it during briefings with congressional aides.