Got Gas?

If you don’t, prices at the pump should give it to you soon. I drive a Toyota Prius hybrid, so I’m good. The suckers driving SUVs (big, bigger, biggest) are the ones to pity. When SUVs hit the road, blocking out the sun (if you had the misfortune of driving in the next lane), you must wonder: Do Americans know of an unlimited oil supply? A secret cache? A cache hidden til the price is right? Til the oil barons can really rake it in (or us over)? Did the oil gods patiently wait for summer, knowing that traditionally American families pack the kids into the SUV and hit the road for Disney World, Sea World, Knott's Berry Farm--indeed, anywhere that promises good food, lots of fun, and great adventure for one and all? Our insatiable thirst for oil is like a toilet overflowing: it can’t be controlled; it can’t be stopped.

Discussion on Democracy Now!

America imports about 70% of its oil. The available oil is about 3-1/2 trillion barrels. The recoverable oil (in the ground) does not increase, according to most geologists. Less oil is reported. Shell has been forced to admit this. At the moment, we’re not running out; we’re merely running down. The price of getting oil out of the ground is increasing with north Canadian and Russian oil becoming more difficult to recover.

China, as a major oil producer, is reaching peak. Iran is a large factor impacting foreign policy. Global oil consumption has been rising steadily across the globe. Iran wants to sell oil in Euros, which will have a negative effect on the U.S. Iraq wanted to deal in euros, too; however, they were stopped once the U.S. invaded. Apparently, OPEC hasn’t thought about going to euros yet. As supplies of oil shrink, oil wars can worsen, causing universal instability. Don’t wait for this administration to announce a conservation plan any time soon. They are oil men, after all.

A Curious Fact

According to Jesse Jackson (Rainbow Coalition), the people of New Orleans cannot vote by satellite; interestingly, the people of Fallujah can.

Destruction Postponed

On June 2nd, the US military planned to detonate a 700-TON nuclear explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that would send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official reported.

But, wait! There’s more!

The sound and light show has been postponed.

Seems the 700-TON nuclear bomb that was scheduled to be detonated underground in the Nevada Desert on June 2, 2006, will instead be detonated on June 23, 2006.

This is not defense! We have the biggest, baddest military on earth. Everyone knows it; no one disputes it. Why do we need bigger, badder nukes? The bomb that the Bush administration wants to test makes the ones we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like firecrackers. If we were to use a nuclear weapon preemptively, it would be unconscionable--cold blooded murder. If in reaction to our saber-rattling someone were to use one on us first, it would be too late.

Wake Up, People!

Immigrants' Rights

Immigrant workers recently rose up and demonstrated against the Sensenbrenner bill in a mass mobilization. Do you think maybe some of those uppity brown folks want to step out of the shadows and into the light to receive some of the privileges they are working and paying taxes for?

Definition of a Corporation

Remember this from Business Law 101? A corporation is the most common form of business organization, one which is chartered by a state and given many legal rights as an entity separate from its owners.

This form of business is characterized by the limited liability of its owners, the issuance of shares of easily transferable stock, and existence as a going concern. The process of becoming a corporation, called incorporation, gives the company separate legal standing from its owners and protects those owners from being personally liable in the event that the company is sued.

Incorporation also provides companies with a more flexible way to manage their ownership structure. In addition, there are different tax implications for corporations, although these can be both advantageous and disadvantageous. In these respects, corporations differ from sole proprietorships and limited partnerships.

Presently, the United States has abdicated its ability to monitor corporations; as a result, they are out of control. Examples include Big Oil corporations like Exxon-Mobil (remember Enron?) as well as retailers like Wal-Mart and Target.

At the moment in this corporation-friendly administration, the public is picking up the tab for health care, tax breaks and refunds, and other subsidies for American corporations … regardless of offshoring, pollution, and other detrimental practices.

I can’t help but stop and wonder: “Is what’s good for American corporations really good for America?”

Cheney’s Lucrative Halliburton Ties

October 11, 2005

About two years ago, Dick Cheney told a national television audience, "Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests." Cheney said, "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." Even at the time, the claim wasn't true.

A non-partisan congressional report requested by Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-NJ) office showed that Cheney still has substantial financial interests in Halliburton, including lucrative deferred compensation and more than 433,000 stock options. But instead of acknowledging the ties and then divesting himself from his former company, Cheney denied everything.

Lautenberg, to his enormous credit, has stuck with this story and issued a report today.

An analysis released today by the Office of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg reveals that Vice President Cheney's Halliburton stock options have increased in value an astronomical 3,281% in one year. In other words, Cheney’s stock options, which were worth $241,498 one year ago are now valued at $8,165,489.07. In light of the surging value of Vice President Cheney's holdings, Senator Lautenberg reiterated his call for the Vice President to forfeit his continuing financial interest in the Halliburton Co (HAL). In his avarice and arrogance, Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options and receives almost $200,000 a year in deferred salary from Halliburton.

“As Halliburton's fortunes rise, so do the Vice President's, and that is wrong,” said Senator Lautenberg. “Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts. It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time as his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”

Given the circumstances, that seems like a reasonable suggestion.

According to the Vice President's Federal Financial Disclosure forms, he holds the following Halliburton stock options:

* 100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested), expire 12-03-07
* 33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire 12-02-08
* 300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire 12-02-09

This continues to be a political problem for Cheney that can be easily resolved. Cheney could simply do what he claims to have already done: sever his ties and remove his financial interests from the company. Considering Halliburton's lucrative government contracts, and the dubious conditions surrounding the deals, this should be a no-brainer for the White House.

The longer they wait, the better Frank Lautenberg is going to look, and the worse Dick Cheney is going to look.

Rebel Yells

Finally, the music is speaking to the mess our country is in. Listen to Pete Seeger, Chuck D, Neil Young, and others. Listen to the words. Better yet, purchase their CDs to show your support.

You must get the Neil Young CD, Living With War. Here are some of the featured titles:

After The Garden
Living With War
The Restless Consumer
Shock And Awe
Families
Flags Of Freedom
Let’s Impeach The President
Lookin’ For A Leader
Roger And Out
America The Beautiful

Sir! No Sir!

“Sir! No Sir!” is a movement that rocked the world...a story that has been suppressed. Displaced Films presents “Sir! No Sir!”--a film by David Zeiger. Want to check it out? Go to www.sirnosir.com (linked by the title of this post).

Okay, Folks, One More Time...

The Fourth Amendment

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants issued, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”

Enabling Act
as Practiced in the United States

An enabling act, in reference to the admission of new states into the Union, is legislation passed by Congress authorizing the people of a territory to frame a constitution. The act also lays down the requirements that must be met as a prerequisite to statehood.

Ten Dangers of the PATRIOT Act
that every American should know

1. The government can conduct "sneak and peek" searches in which agents enter your home or business and search your belongings without informing you … either until long after the fact … or never.

2. Government agents can force libraries and bookstores to hand over the titles of books that you have purchased or borrowed and can demand the identity of anyone who has purchased or borrowed certain books. The government can also prosecute libraries and bookstores for informing you that the search occurred or even for informing you that an inquiry was made.

3. Federal agents are authorized under the PATRIOT Act to use hidden devices to trace the telephone calls or emails of people who are not even suspected of a crime. The FBI is also permitted to use its Magic Lantern technology to monitor everything you do on your computer--recording not just websites you visit but EVERY SINGLE KEYSTROKE as well.

4. Government agents are permitted to arrest and detain individuals "suspected" of terrorist activities and to hold them INDEFINITELY, WITHOUT CHARGE, and WITHOUT access to an ATTORNEY. This includes you, your family, your friends--everyone!

5. Federal agents are permitted to conduct full investigations of American citizens and permanent legal residents simply because they have participated in activities protected by the First Amendment, such as writing a letter to the editor or attending a peaceful rally.

6. Law enforcement agents are permitted to listen in on discussions between prisoners and their attorneys, thus denying them their Constitutional right to confidential legal counsel.

7. Terrorism suspects may be tried in secret military tribunals where defendants have no right to a public trial, no right to trial by jury, no right to confront the evidence, and no right to appeal to an independent court. In short, the Constitution does not apply.

8. The CIA is granted authority to spy on American citizens, a domestic power that has previously been denied to this international espionage organization.

9. In addition to the PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration has given us Operations TIPS, a government program that encourages citizens to spy on each other and to report their neighbors’ activities to the authorities. It's EXACTLY the kind of thing for which we used to deride East Germany and the Soviet Union--and for which we currently deride Red China and North Korea. Fortunately, Operation TIPS (or AmeriSnitch, as it's known to its many detractors) seems to have been recalled to the factory--at least for now.

Brad Templeton has set up a website at http://www.all-the-other-names-were-taken.com/tipstips.html
where you can report people you suspect of being informants for Operation TIPS. It's an interesting and amusing site, well worth a look.

10. In the wake of Operation TIPS came something even worse: Total Information Awareness. TIA is a program of the Defense Department that, when fully operational, will link commercial and government databases so that the DoD can immediately put its finger on any piece of information about you that it wants. Granted, the name has since been changed to protect the guilty, but the program is still in place in full and increasing force.

Have You Read 1984?
It’s Here!

New York Times columnist William Saffire writes: "Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend--all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as a virtual, centralized grand database."

Bill Moyers Comments on the PATRIOT Act

At the same time the Bush administration is probing into your private life, it is shielding itself from all public scrutiny. It has shredded the Freedom of Information Act; it has locked away presidential records not only of the current administration but of administrations going all the way back to Reagan as well; and it has even locked up George W. Bush's gubernatorial records so that the people of Texas can't see what he did to them while serving as their governor.

Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is also using anti-terror legislation and executive orders to protect its corporate sponsors from scrutiny and from prosecution.

The drug company Eli Lilly, for instance, was recently granted immunity from all cases brought against it related to a vaccine it manufactured that turned out to cause autism in many children. Eli Lilly contributed over $3 million in the last two election campaigns. The Bush administration also protected the Bayer Corporation’s patent on the antibiotic Cipro throughout the anthrax scare.

Under George W. Bush's kinder, gentler fascism, U.S. corporations are now allowed to do business with the Homeland Security Department even if they cheat the government out of vast amounts of tax revenues by setting up offshore business fronts in the Caribbean Islands. It used to be that tax-evaders were tracked down and punished. Now they're rewarded with fat government contracts. Could the slave labor be far behind? No. Look at the Mariana Islands. It will be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Secret Arrests?

Did we hear that right? It seems that the Homeland Security Department (HSD) is about to become the KGB. The first PATRIOT Act already allows for people to be locked up indefinitely without a lawyer and without even being charged with a crime. If PATRIOT Act II passes, then arrests would also be secret. That means that dissenters (or anyone else, for that matter) could disappear without a trace, just as they did in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist Russia, and in Pinochet's Chile.

PATRIOT Act II would grant even more immunity to Big Business. A corporation could pour toxins into your local river, for instance, and you wouldn't know about it until all the fish died and your neighbor’s kids were born with missing or extra limbs. And then when you went to court and demanded to know what the company was dumping into your river, the company could deny you that information on the grounds that it's a national security secret.

Jim Hightower puts it this way: “All a company has to do to shield anything it wants to keep from the public eye--say, an embarrassing chemical spill--is give the documents to the Homeland Security Department and call them ‘critical infrastructure information.’”

Dot Calm Is Not So Calm!

Are you scared of nukes? I am! The Bush administration may think that detonating a nuclear bomb underground might seem like a case of “out of sight, out of mind,” but let’s face it: even an underground nuclear “test” would have far-reaching effects on our “allies,” our “enemies,” and our environment. Out of concern, I faxed this message to all 100 Senators:

* * * * STOP! STOP! STOP! * * * *


PLEASE DO ANYTHING / EVERYTHING
POSSIBLE TO DISSUADE THIS ADMINISTRATION
FROM DETONATING A MEGA-TON BOMB IN
NEVADA ON JUNE 2nd.

Let’s use our power for good, not evil.