Category Archives: Politics

I understand that if you campaign for President and do not win, you don’t take on any responsibilities, so after his campaign Ralph Nader can go back to his regular routine of doing nothing. Meanwhile, he will make a few speeches (no monumental task) and tour around the country a little bit, maybe see the Grand Canyon. He will get money for this from the Republicans, who will give him plenty because they believe he will take votes from the Democrats. When the dust dies down, he will take the leftover money, which is likely to be significant, and go home. He has found a niche in which a person works only one season out of every four years. I think Ron Paul has picked up on that and is hoping the Democrats will kick in a few bucks toward his retirement.

http://update.videoegg.com/flash/proxy.swf?jsver=1.4

My commute to work is just a bit over 52 miles a day, 26 miles each direction. I have just over 13 years with my employer, and while I am not getting rich, I am what people call “making a living.”
Anyway, I just got e-mail from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that reminded me that gas was $1.45 a gallon when George Bush took office. The Corolla gets pretty good gas mileage, but with one thing and another, I put around $30.00 worth of gas in the car three times a month. Let’s see, at $3.00 a gallon, that is, hey, 30 gallons a month for $90.00.
At pre-Bush-Halliburton prices, that would be $43.00 a month.
So the gas keeps going up, and with raises below the inflation rate, I will have to work until I am 100 years old — no, wait. That doesn’t figure. If I earn less each year, eventually I will be working for nothing. Then how will Halliburton get money?

The House of Representatives upheld the Bush veto of the children’s health care bill yesterday, so the bill is going back to the White House with a few changes next month. Who believes anyone is looking at the changes? We apparently have no courts and no legislature, just one decider, and we are all supposed to hold our breath until 2008.
If you don’t know how your congressman voted, you can look up that name here.
In case you are anxious about the executive branch taking over government, don’t look now but the “executive branch” is also disabled, with interim heads running a lot of agencies that are supposed to be headed by appointed leaders approved by Congress. Instead, our President appoints an interim leader. It is not the executive branch that has become strong, it is the executive alone.

Remember when we elected him President?

I first heard about the bulletproof backpacks on CNN. Then I found that it was apparently true when this story from the Boston Herald popped up in response to my search for more information:

Dads Mike Pelonzi, 43, and Joe Curran, 42, dreamed up the bullet-proof backpack, which also blunts knife attacks, to protect their own children after witnessing the Columbine massacre in 1999.
?It was after seeing what happened in Columbine that we started thinking about this. I?m a parent and so is Joe and we wanted a way of keeping kids safe at school and this is what we came up with,? said Pelonzi, co-owner of MJ Safety Solutions which produces ?My Child?s Pack?.
The backpacks, which will cost $175, have a super-lightweight bullet-proof plate sewn into the back which weighs no more than a bottle of water. Pelonzi said the material used is a secret.
The plate material meets National Institute of Justice safety standards, said Pelonzi, and during a three-year testing phase, stood up to bullets as well as machete, hatchet and Ka-bar knife attacks. (Dads push bulletproof backpacks in schools, Mike Underwood, August 9, 2007, Boston Herald)

Boston school officials still have to decide whether or not their students can use the bag, since the dress code prohibits a student from wearing “anything which is threatening or offensive.?
I am firmly convinced that there is a better response to school violence, and we should be thinking of how we can make our schools more nurturing places. Anybody who is not with me on this might be interested in My First Riot Gear.

Here is Ann Coulter in her persona as Legal Affairs Correspondent for Human Events talking about the YouTube Democratic debate:

CNN commentators keep telling us how young and hip the audience was for last week’s YouTube Democratic debate, apparently unaware that the camera occasionally panned across the audience, which was the same oddball collection of teachers’ union shills and welfare recipients you see at all Democratic gatherings.
Noticeably, Gov. Bill Richardson got the first “woo” of the debate — the mating call of rotund liberal women — for demanding a federal mandate that would guarantee public schoolteachers a minimum salary of $40,000…

So what is with the putdown for school teachers? I saw a position announcement the other day coming to a teacher education department that was seeking a person trained as a public school teacher to work as a nanny for 3 kids in Washington, D.C. The offered salary was $50,000.00, and there was a retirement account and health insurance as well as room and board, with two days off a week and holidays. Wait till teacher’s union shrills hear about that!
And I know a few rotund liberal women who could squash Ann Coulter like the biting bug she is. Even liberals get mad once in a while.

Democrats.org posted “Disclosing 401(k) Fees“:

Workers deserve to retire with the dignity and comfort that they have earned, but as the Associated Press reports, incomplete information about hidden fees can drain thousands of dollars from 401(k) plans.

I have been looking around for some information on how these work and how people are using them. I found a site at http://www.efmoody.com/ where Errold F. Moody Jr. has gathered a lot of information. I also found an interesting article on MSN.money by Sottt Burns references Brooks Hamilton, titled How the 401(k) System Fails Most People at http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/RetirementandWills/P90046.asp.
Apparently, we have a problem here since so many employers have moved from defined benefit plans to 401(k) plans which people can’t understand or can’t afford. Add to that the first link above, in which the hidden fees have made the system look more like a scam than a pension plan.
If you are depending upon a 401(k) plan and actually have time to inform yourself about it, that will be time well spent. If you are working 2 jobs and don’t have time to check on your 401(k), just plan to work a lot longer than you expect…

From the LA Times: U.S. bending rules on Colombia terror? By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer, July 22, 2007

Several lawmakers say multinationals that aid violent groups in return for protection are not being prosecuted.
The Bush administration has declared that a hallmark of its counter-terrorism policy is to go after the financiers of terrorism just as aggressively as the terrorists themselves ? anywhere in the world. But the situation in Colombia underscores the difficulty in prosecuting such goals when it conflicts with American economic interests abroad and trade relations with friendly governments. Making the matter particularly sensitive, the U.S. is in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement with Colombia, and sends it billions annually in military and other aid.
“Do our economic interests trump the war on terror? Are we making trade-offs?” Delahunt asked. “If we are, at the very least the public should know about it.”
Lance Compa, an international trade specialist at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, acknowledged that there were many competing priorities in Colombia.
“But the general proposition that gross human rights violations should be weighed against trade policy and foreign policy is a mistake,” Compa said. “The paramilitaries have infiltrated the highest levels of the [Colombian] government, and the Bush administration is looking the other way.
“It makes it all the more incumbent on U.S. policymakers to put a stop to any corporate dealings with paramilitary death squads.”

So we are financing them over there so we can fight them over there2 so we can get rich over here. I see. Another magic triangle.
And did we ever expect to hear “It makes it all the more incumbent on U.S. policy makers to put a stop to any corporate dealings with paramilitary death squads”? Excuse me, I thought they were killing people only with fake food, denial of medical care, contaminating the environment, freezing wages, guzzling gas, dropping retirement plans, exporting jobs, downsizing, and outsourcing. Who thought ??corporate dealings with paramilitary death squads??

So Lurita Doan, the Bush appointee running the GSA, violated the Hatch Act.

Like so many Bush appointees lately summoned to account by Congress, Ms. Doan repeatedly said she could not recall details of the meeting. In a bit of novelty, she claimed to be engrossed in reading her BlackBerry e-mail messages. Investigators of the United States Office of Special Counsel found no forensic evidence that she was using electronic devices during the meeting. Her other defense ? that her accusers were poor-performing malcontents ? was also found untrue, with several holding merit citations. [New York Times Editorial: Forget Ethics, Remember Politics, 5-29-2007]

I personally believe that people should pay for their crimes (violations of law) within the established justice system — Constitution, statutory law, precedent, day in court, right to face accusers, judge and jury, penalty hearing, sentence, paying your debt to society, all that stuff, remember? But I grew up in fundamentalism, and this is how the final court in Christian fundamentalism works if you are charged with some variance from God?s law:

• you die
• you go to Hell
• you wait in the Hell situation until the ending of time
• at the ending of time, you find yourself standing before the judgment seat of Christ
• books are opened in which all of your deeds have been written down.
• your sinful deeds are read for all to hear, and you are judged
• you are thrown into the eternal lake of fire and brimstone

You can find the process described in greater detail here
Of course there is that little thing of asking God for forgiveness. When you do that, your accounting page is washed clean by the blood shed at the crucifixion, and your name is written in the Book of Life. So I figure that none of the Bush appointees, who are fundamentalists (first requirement) are at all nervous. They just have a little prayer closet off the courtroom where they ask forgiveness when they finish testifying. That way, when they get hit by a truck on the way home and find themselves standing at the white throne and facing the open book, God won?t recall their perjury. He would have forgotten as well anything they have done that might have called them to testify in the first place. Though their sins [might have been] as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool. [Isaiah 1:18]