Psychopaths in Power: Why Texas is the 'Gulag State'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

An innocent man has been executed in the Gulag State of Texas. This man, whose innocence is now proven, is the ultimate price paid for endemic, state-sponsored idiocy and even less excusable psychopathy. Educational standards have declined under fascist GOP regimes --prominently Bush Jr and his successor Rick Perry. Incarceration rates have risen; justice is applied inequitably. The deaths of innocents at the hands of a psychopathic, GOP dominated state is the price that is paid for allowing the GOP any influence, any power.

A report published today in the New Yorker finds that Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 in Texas for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, was innocent. He is pictured at left with his two-year-old daughter Amber, who died in the fire.

This is incredibly sad news, but it also marks the most conclusive evidence yet that an innocent person has been put to death in the United States. We’ve known for years that the arson science used to convict Willingham was flat-out wrong. Today’s New Yorker report goes further: it dismantles the case that sent Willingham to his death, point-by-point, proving that every shred of evidence used against him was false.

Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck wrote in the Huffington Post: "There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed. The question now turns to how we can stop it from happening again."

And the New York Times adds, in an editorial today: "The Willingham investigation, which is continuing, is further evidence that the criminal justice system is far too flawed to justify imposing a death penalty."

I strongly, strongly urge you to read David Grann’s incredible New Yorker piece in its entirety. I can’t imagine that you can leave the story with trust in our system of capital punishment.

--New Yorker: Texas Executed an Innocent Man

Texas is about 50 years behind the the US, much more so compared to Europe. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Many studies have shown that all crimes increase in death penalty states. I doubt that anyone knows why that is the case but the verifiable numbers prove conclusively that that is the case in fact. I would venture an hypothesis: the death penalty creates and/or encourages a society in which life itself is not valued to the same degree as it is in non-death penalty states. Of the variables, it is difficult to say which is the cause, which is the effect.

In any case, states without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates. The death penalty is medieval, barbaric, ineffective. Its effect is measurable if it cannot be explained. Simply --the death penalty does not and will never deter crimes of any sort. There is, therefore, no RATIONAL reason for the state to continue murdering folk. It is not merely crazy and psychopathic to keep on doing it, it is counter-productive and immoral.

States Without the Death Penalty Have Better Records on Homicide

A new survey by the New York Times found that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. The Times reports that ten of the twelve states without the death penalty have homicide rates below the national average, whereas half of the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty. "I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago," said the state's governor, John Engler, a Republican, referring to the state's abolition of the death penalty in 1846. "We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have the death penalty."

--New York Times, 9/22/00, Death Penalty Information Center

Texas, though it boasts of its 'oil' economy', has apparently forgotten that Texas has not occupied a position of prominence with regard to petroleum production since it was discovered that bombing Iraq and killing civilians there was much, much cheaper than are the expensive secondary recovery methods by which big lying oil companies squeeze a few more gallons out of all but abandoned oil fields in West Texas. It's called 'secondary recovery'. It is very expensive, often not profitable. It is cheaper and easier to con the American public into supporting wars of aggression in which it is known that a primary military objective is the siezure of oil fields!

Why spend millions exploring for oil when you can just steal fields that are already productive? The cost of bombing the crap out of the oil's rightful owners?? That is of no interest to the 'oil barons' of Texas who, in fact, produce very little oil. Is is easier to con the American public. It is easier to let the U.S. military seize the oil fields that are still productive. The US taxpaper is stuck with the tab; the oil barons are off the hook.

So-called 'free enterprise' --irrationally revered by Texans, scumbaggers (tea baggers) and rednecks --has robbed millions of children of a decent education and as many poor of justice in a state ruled by the oil elites.

• Texas --Bush style --provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates;
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of the the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas --a state that now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar disastrous fate.

I am of the confirmed opinion that the rise of crime in Texas is concurrent with the rise of the Texas GOP. I suggest that the fascist policies that now dominate the political and cultural life and environment of Texas spawns crime and creates the conditions in which it is nurtured and survives.

Still, most people are now ashamed to admit that punishment is based on vengeance and, for that reason, various excuses and apologies have been offered for the cruelty that goes with it. Some of the more humane, or “squeamish,” who still believe in punishment, contend that the object of this infliction is the reformation of the victim. This, of course, cannot be urged of the death penalty or even punishment for life, or for very long-term sentences. In these cases there is neither inducement to reform nor any object in the reformation. No matter how thorough the reform, the prisoner never goes back to society, or he returns after there is no longer a chance for him to be of use to the world or to enjoy life.

--Clarence Darrow, Crime: It's Cause and Treatment

Tea Baggers are Scumbaggers!

Recently --Texas Gov Rick Perry's boisterous audience of schizoid idiots were caught waving US flags even as they shouted: SECEDE! It might have been funny if these folk were not so tragically STUPID! Think about it --traitors to the US, favoring secession from the US waving US flags. IDIOTS! Is 'secession' from the US necessarily 'treason'? Well --the US just prior to the Civil War certainly thought so and fought and won a Civil War to prove the point. In any case, waving US flags while advocating secession is absurd if not downright moronic!

Secede?? Perhaps the US Should Throw Texas Out, Deny Them Federal Aid Until They Address the Human Rights Abuses in the Fascist Prison System!

Clearly, scumbaggers...uh...tea baggers result from the monumental failure of Texas to educate its young. It is a tragic lapse of values. It is as well an utter failure of policy and budget priorities resulting in Texas' humiliating failure to educate its younger generations. What is to be said of a society that cannot or worse --will not --educate its young? Answer: nothing good!

Nevertheless, Perry is said to have 'fired up an anti-tax tea party with an old Southern mantra: 'states' rights'. I say 'state's right' is just a code word for old-time, old South bigotry. The term should raise as many hackles as do terms like 'nigger' and 'Sambo'! 'State's rights' should be a wake up call to a black community that was since the end of the Civil War denied the the civil rights that were accorded 'white folk' without controversy. My sympathies are not misplaced; my own ancestors --Native Americans --were the object of genocide, rounded up, denied properties that had been recognized by the US government, expelled, marched hundreds of miles to 'concentration camps'.

I doubt that this or any other so-called 'tea party' was exceptionally stupid! It was, rather, typically stupid, based on generations in which old bigotries, prejudices and ignorance were passed down and encouraged. Until the scumbaggers change their tune, I will urge them, rather, to return from whence they came. This land is MY land!

Texas is the Number One Backwater in Education

The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre along the lines of what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

“Our people just don’t want their children to be fish in a bowl,” said David Thweatt, the schools superintendent and driving force behind the policy. “Country people are take-care-of-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

Even in Texas, with its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

Gun-control advocates are wringing their hands, while pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state’s major teachers unions have expressed stunned outrage, while the conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has endorsed the idea.

--In Texas School, Teachers Carry Books and Guns, New York Times

Texas Is No. One; Leads the Nation in Executions

When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.

One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green's appellate lawyer, Verna Langham -- who also handled Kenneth Foster's first appeal -- sees as the danger of the law of parties. "[It] is subject to such loose interpretation," she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. "A kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death." Green was executed in 1999.

--Alternet, Innocent Man Sentenced to Death Under Cruel Texas Law

Black people represent only 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.

• While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.
• One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.
• Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
• If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the US The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the US by 63%.

Do you see the pattern? I allege that Bush and the GOP deliberately sabotaged education in Texas with budget cuts and other GOP idiocy so that the GOP's corporate buddies could make a killing in the prison business! Who but the corporations who run the fascist prison system have benefited by the measurable increase in crime that defines GOP occupied Texas.

Everything's big in Texas — big pickup trucks, big SUVs and the state's big carbon footprint, too.

Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation.

The headquarters state of America's oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second- and third-ranking states — combined.

A multitude of factors contribute to the carbon output, among them: Texas' 19 coal-burning power plants; a heavy concentration of refineries and chemical plants; a lack of mass transit; and a penchant among ranchers and urban cowboys alike for brawny, gas-guzzling trucks — sometimes to haul things, but often just to look Texas tough.

Debbie Howden, an Austin real estate agent, said her family of six has two pickup trucks, three SUVs, and no apologies. "I would definitely put size and safety over the emissions thing," said Howden, 55. She calls their high fuel bills a "necessary evil."

--Texas Is Biggest Carbon Polluter

Ten large companies generate more than one third of the 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year by U.S. electric power generators, according to figures in a first-of-its-kind database unveiled Wednesday.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and Southern Co. of Atlanta, which run the largest coal power plants in the country, top the list of U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, according to data compiled by the Center for Global Development, a global economic development think tank in Washington, D.C.

The database, called CARMA or Carbon Monitoring for Action, culls for the first time data both from government regulators around the world and commercial databases to provide an up-to-date look at the state of CO2 from power production—which accounts for one quarter of all carbon emissions. (The database doesn't look at other large sources, like transportation and manufacturing.) Here are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the United

--The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters

The fascist corporatization of state prisons makes a slick end run, a veer, perhaps a 'triple option', around the Bill of Rights, sets up crony [phony?] corporations with a guaranteed gravy train at tax payer expense, and --to sweeten the deal --it provides them with slave labor. Bill Yeoman nor Darrel Royal could have done better on the gridiron. What a hand-off! What an end run around the laws! What a blitz!

My assertions are backed up by a recent Pew study of trends that had been embraced by Bush's Texas, primarily the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. As in Texas, crime rates over the period under study increased. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to corporate robber barons.

For the first time in history more than one in every 100 adults in America are in jail or prison—a fact that significantly impacts state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety. According to a new report released today by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, at the start of 2008, 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails, or one in every 99.1 men and women, according to the study. During 2007, the prison population rose by more than 25,000 inmates. In addition to detailing state and regional prison growth rates, Pew’s report, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, identifies how corrections spending compares to other state investments, why it has increased, and what some states are doing to limit growth in both prison populations and costs while maintaining public safety.

As prison populations expand, costs to states are on the rise. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. However, the national recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. And while violent criminals and other serious offenders account for some of the growth, many inmates are low-level offenders or people who have violated the terms of their probation or parole.

--More than One in 100 Adults Are Behind Bars, Pew Study Finds

It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account. It is a corporate 'gravy train', relieving elected officials of almost every responsibility that government is traditionally and rightfully accorded. It's a scheme, a legalized payoff, a 'good living' for those profiting from incompetent and irresponsible government.

Nevertheless, the industrialized application of the death penalty cannot kill off criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may one day cite this fact in support of a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

• There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
• According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
• The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
• Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
• If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
• The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
• The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.

  --An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

Lower and working classes pay more than their fair share of taxes. The government taxes labor and gives capital a free ride, a recipe for an impending economic collapse, a collapse that appears to be well underway and quite beyond anyone's power or ability to stop. But that has not stopped the government from playing it's well-rehearsed role as the shakedown arm of the nation's tiny and shrinking elite.

If because of GOP transfers of unearned wealth to the increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the population, labor is unproductive or impoverished the productivity of the nation will decline and ultimately collapse. The poor are increasingly denied decent housing or food because elites have bid up prices on commodities. If you can no longer afford decent housing, health care or food, you have then, perhaps recently under Bush, fallen off the ladder and your children have been or will be left behind! Already just one percent of the US owns more than the rest of us combined. They RULE! It's the GOP way.

Social Darwinism --a tragic mis-read of Darwin --has harmed humankind; many a greedy, psychopathic robber baron has justified his own wealth and the atrocities committed to acquire it with Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism continues to impoverish large segments of our society. Social Darwinism is personified by a fictional character --Scrooge --who summed it up in Dickens' A Christmas Carol:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? Then let them die and decrease the surplus population." —Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

In those categories and thanks to the GOP, Texas is NUMBER ONE!

Is Justice Served?

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

---

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

Subscribe

Add to Google

Add Cowboy Videos to Google

Texas is 'number one' in executions, murders, children in poverty, industrial pollution

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Texas recently beat Mississippi in a race to dead last in high school graduations. At the same time, Texas may 'boast' that it is 'number one' in executions, number 'one' in the number of children living in poverty, number one the number of murders per one thousand persons, number one in various forms of industrial pollution! Number one in the race to bottom.

I had toyed with headlining this piece: 'Why Capitalism Must be Eliminated and Replaced'. But the answer was too obvious: Texas! Texas will have proven Marx correct about almost everything! Marx was certainly correct about the source of 'value' in any economic system. He was most certainly correct about the incompatibility of capitalism and democracy. Texas is the best evidence Marx didn't live long enough to cite.

Texas is called the gulag state for good reasons. Certainly, justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system. Texas is about 50 years behind the times in this regard.

Texas is a state in which so-called 'free enterprise' has robbed millions of children of a decent education and as many poor of justice in a state ruled by elites. As a result of so-called 'free enterprise':

• Texas/Bush syle provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates;
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of the the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas --a state that now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar distastrous fate.

Surreal Scenes from a State in Terminal Denial

Recently --Texas Gov Rick Perry's boisterous audience of schizoid idiots were caught waving US flags even as they shouted: SECEDE! Clearly, a result of the monumental failure of Texas to educate its young. It is a lapse of values! It is as well an utter failure of policy and budget priorities resulting in Texas' utter and humiliating failure to educate its younger generations. Nevertheless, Perry is said to have 'fired up an anti-tax tea party with an old Southern mantra: 'states' rights'. I say 'state's right' is old-time, old South bigotry. 'State's rights' is a wake up call to a black community that was denied in Texas the promise of Dr. Martin Luther King's struggles.

I doubt that this so-called 'tea party' was exceptionally stupid! It was, rather, typically stupid, based on a profound and growing ignorance of economics, history, and recent headlines. The 'tea-parties' are an obvious result of Texas' proven inability to educate its young! Perry was whistling past the graveyard with a tired old tune: "...the Texas' economy is in good shape compared with other states" and "...the federal budget mess"

Is it?

No!

Texas is, rather, out of oil and out of time. Like the US, as a whole, one is hard pressed to name a single viable industry since the East Texas and, later, the West Texas oil fields failed to compete with Middle Eastern oil. Before the oil boom, Texas was a farm and ranch economy. Without oil or its equal, Texas will be fortunate if it makes a peaceful transition to a farm and ranch economy. Indeed, the nation --having exported its auto, steel and electronic industries during the Reagan years --will be fortunate to survive as a farm and ranch economy. It will be fortunate because the conduct of farming and ranching has been taken over by the huge monopolies. In simpler times, a family might survive a downturn or even a financial collapse by living off the land. Today --there is, perhaps, no land left that might be homesteaded and everywhere poor people are deprived of the means by which they may survive or make an honest living.

Gore Vidal, meanwhile, foresees a US bankruptcy putting an end to what he called 'insane wars'. He is correct about the insanity of US wars in particular. In the end, however, bankruptcy will be even costlier as a direct result of 'reagonomics'. That is, only one percent of the nation owns more than about 90 percent of the rest of us combined. Only these elites benefit from wars of aggression and oil theft.

Any person not a 'member' of this tiny one percent pays for US wars with his/her life or with higher taxes as a percentage of his/her income. The elites pay absolutely nothing!War is, in fact, the elites' bread and butter. There is a good living to be made with war, a killing, in fact! The elites are the sole beneificiaries of US wars, adventures and land grabs. These elites --for whom war is most often fought --will eagerly sacrifice the lives of every young man or woman not carrying their seed; they will, likewise, finance upon the backs and futures of the unborn poor numerous wars of aggression from which only they benefit. It is a form of eugenics that numerous famous Americans notoriously supported.

A bankruptcy for America will be a very, very hard crash from which there may be no bounce as there had been during the FDR administration. Later, a GOP President, Ronald Reagan, would preside over what had been at that time, the biggest, longest, deepest depression since the crash of '29. Yet --the nation recovered under a Democrat, Bill Clinton, demonized and hated for having dared undo the harm that had been done by Ronald Reagan.

Texas is the Number Backwater in Education: Another Idiotic Idea

The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre along the lines of what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

“Our people just don’t want their children to be fish in a bowl,” said David Thweatt, the schools superintendent and driving force behind the policy. “Country people are take-care-of-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

Even in Texas, with its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

Gun-control advocates are wringing their hands, while pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state’s major teachers unions have expressed stunned outrage, while the conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has endorsed the idea.

--In Texas School, Teachers Carry Books and Guns, New York Times

Texas Is No. One; Leads the Nation in Executions

When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.

One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green's appellate lawyer, Verna Langham -- who also handled Kenneth Foster's first appeal -- sees as the danger of the law of parties. "[It] is subject to such loose interpretation," she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. "A kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death." Green was executed in 1999.

--Alternet, Innocent Man Sentenced to Death Under Cruel Texas Law

Everything's big in Texas — big pickup trucks, big SUVs and the state's big carbon footprint, too.

Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation.

The headquarters state of America's oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second- and third-ranking states — combined.

A multitude of factors contribute to the carbon output, among them: Texas' 19 coal-burning power plants; a heavy concentration of refineries and chemical plants; a lack of mass transit; and a penchant among ranchers and urban cowboys alike for brawny, gas-guzzling trucks — sometimes to haul things, but often just to look Texas tough.

Debbie Howden, an Austin real estate agent, said her family of six has two pickup trucks, three SUVs, and no apologies. "I would definitely put size and safety over the emissions thing," said Howden, 55. She calls their high fuel bills a "necessary evil."

--Texas Is Biggest Carbon Polluter

Ten large companies generate more than one third of the 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year by U.S. electric power generators, according to figures in a first-of-its-kind database unveiled Wednesday.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and Southern Co. of Atlanta, which run the largest coal power plants in the country, top the list of U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, according to data compiled by the Center for Global Development, a global economic development think tank in Washington, D.C.

The database, called CARMA or Carbon Monitoring for Action, culls for the first time data both from government regulators around the world and commercial databases to provide an up-to-date look at the state of CO2 from power production—which accounts for one quarter of all carbon emissions. (The database doesn't look at other large sources, like transportation and manufacturing.) Here are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the United

--The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters

The fascist corporatization of state prisons makes a slick end run, perhaps a 'triple option', around the Bill of Rights, sets up crony corporations with a guaranteed gravy train at tax payer expense, and --to sweeten the deal --it provides them with slave labor. Bill Yeoman nor Darrel Royal could have done better on the gridiron.

It is no accident that under Gov George W. Bush, Texas beat out Mississippi for 'dead last' in education. As education declines, crime increases. Increasing crime fuels the corporate prison gravy train. Justice has nothing to do with it.

It's about warehousing and enslaving people for profit

There is nothing in the middle ages half so slick, so cunning, so evil! Unless the nation wakes up to what happened in Texas, the nation will enter not just an economic depression but a new dark age, perhaps an end to civilization as we know it. We already share with the middle ages, a careless disregard for life. In Texas, the crime rate has increased as the prison systems --under Bush Jr --went corporate! As a result, one in 100 Texas residents are in prison, many of them 'corporate' lock ups in which prisoners have no rights. As Texas took the GOP/fascist prison route, education tanked --a recipe for future unemployment, poverty and increased crime.

I see a pattern

Declining education guarantees that unemployment, poverty, and crime will rise. Declining education likewise guarantees a risk free income for the evil corporations who run the state's corporate gulag with no-bid contracts! As long as the quality of public education declines, two groups will benefit: the corporate owned prisons and expensive private schools affordable only to the very, very rich and/or privileged. I was naive to believe that everyone was entitled to an education. I was naive to believe that education was not just another status symbol as was Yale to Bush.

The GOP runs states like Bush ran the war of aggression against Iraq. State prisons are just another money making opportunity, as was Iraq for the likes of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and professional thugs like Blackwater. And 'education' is just another area in which everyone but about one percent of the population is priced out.

My assertions are backed up by a recent Pew study of trends that had been embraced by Bush's Texas, primarily the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. As in Texas, crime rates over the period under study increased. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to corporate robber barons.

For the first time in history more than one in every 100 adults in America are in jail or prison—a fact that significantly impacts state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety. According to a new report released today by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, at the start of 2008, 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails, or one in every 99.1 men and women, according to the study. During 2007, the prison population rose by more than 25,000 inmates. In addition to detailing state and regional prison growth rates, Pew’s report, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, identifies how corrections spending compares to other state investments, why it has increased, and what some states are doing to limit growth in both prison populations and costs while maintaining public safety.

As prison populations expand, costs to states are on the rise. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. However, the national recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. And while violent criminals and other serious offenders account for some of the growth, many inmates are low-level offenders or people who have violated the terms of their probation or parole.

--More than One in 100 Adults Are Behind Bars, Pew Study Finds

It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account. It is a corporate 'gravy train', reliving elected officials of almost every responsibility that government is traditionally and rightfully accorded. It's a scheme, a legalized payoff, a 'good living' for those profiting from incompetent and irresponsible government.

As the GOP "Enronized" the great state of Texas, an assembly line criminal justice system, in cahoots with a medieval, privatized prison system, proved to be an oxymoron. It was "criminal" but hardly "justice". Despite the GOPs "worst" efforts, crime in Texas, always a topic of much discussion and study, has gotten worse. Texas is big on capital punishment, but even the industrialized application of the death penalty cannot kill off the criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may one day cite this fact in support of a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

• There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
• According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
• The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
• Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
• If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
• The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
• The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.

  --An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

The lessons of the recent 'downturn' are lost on the 'mainstream media'! Owned by some some five or six like thinking conglomerates, the MSM is the last place one should expect to find the truth. For example, the MSM will never tell you that Karl Marx was absolutely correct! Capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

If we divided the income of the US into thirds, we find that the top ten percent of the population gets a third, the next thirty percent gets another third, and the bottom sixty percent get the last third. If we divide the wealth of the US into thirds, we find that the top one percent own a third, the next nine percent own another third, and the bottom ninety percent claim the rest. (Actually, these percentages, true a decade ago, are now out of date. The top one percent are now estimated to own between forty and fifty percent of the nation's wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 95%.

--David Schwikerd, After Capitalism

Schwikerd suggests that 'economic freedom' and 'capitalism' are just as incompatible as Karl Marx has already stated. Schwikerd proposes, therefore, that we eliminate capitalism because capitalists, he says, are consistently bad for democracy. Contrary to what you may hear on FOX news and other symptoms of this failed system, Schwikerd holds that the US can, in fact, must eliminate the class of 'capitalists' who have transfered the product of US labor i.e, the very wealth of this nation upward to but about one percent of the entire population.

Diehards will object that despite the growing divide between obscene wealth on the one hand and abysmal poverty on the other, the US is still a 'land of opportunity'. That is just not true, and perhaps never was.

If the data were to show, for example, that many families were likely to move from the bottom fifth of the income distribution to the top over time, or that children of wealthy families might switch places with middle-class kids when they became adults, then one could conclude that the benefits of growth were more broadly shared than suggested by the profound inequality displayed in the snapshots of Chapter 1.

The evidence, however, does not find this degree of mobility. Of course, some families do move up and down the income scales, but most maintain their relative positions, meaning that relative to other families in their cohort, they remain at or near the income or wealth position in which they started out. For example, one recent study finds that about 60% of families that start in the bottom fifth are still there a decade later. At the other end of the income scale, 52% of families that start in the top fifth finish there at the end of the decade.

--The State of Working America [ PDF ]

Why Karl Marx was Right and Republicans are Just Plain Stupid

How is wealth re-distributed?

• The rich elites pay less as a percentage of their income because they have write-offs and dodges that you do not;
• The rich pay much, much less as a percentage of their total income just staying alive;

As the L-curve demonstrates, most of you reading this article may never find yourself occupying a house costing some one or two million dollars or more. Those in the elite one percent, however, may have several much more expensive houses the total value of which is but a small percentage of total income, an even smaller percentage of total wealth. Should you secure a mortgage for a five hundred thousand dollar house, you should ask yourself what is the value of that house as a percentage of your total income, total net worth? What is the value of that house as a percentage of Bill Gate' total income? Minuscule! Life on a curve is skewed!

Marx adopted Hegel's 'dialectic' substituting 'realism' for 'idealism'. Marx's use of the 'dialectic' was not to explain the world in metaphysical terms but, rather, to makes sense of history. The result is an economic assessment in which Marx interprets history in terms that make sense to biologists: a struggle for survival. Like Darwinists, Marx believes that it is this 'struggle for survival' that determines the nature of societal evolution. The history of humankind is reduced to a class struggle, how one class' exploits another, how 'capital' exploits 'labor', how 'elites' enrich themselves upon the 'value' that is created by acts of labor and labor alone.

Marx saw no other solution but a workers revolution to overthrow the ruling capitalists, to establish a 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. Marx foresaw and described a return to a 'classless' society at the end of an economic cataclysm that would lead inexorably to the communal ownership of the means of production.

So --it is no wonder, then, that the likes of George W. Bush, the leadership of the GOP, the elite robber barons of big business have 'labored' mightily to demonize and discredit the words and concept: 'class warfare'. They are frightened little wimps! I say: "bring it on"

If the ruling elites are incorrect about everything, they must surely be terrified of a world wide revolution that will inexorably and inevitably sweep aside their house o'cards at the end of an economic tsunami.

The GOP has supported and effected outright transfers of wealth from all Americans to an increasingly tiny percentage of the US population. There is but one word for this: THEFT! [See: 'Greed is Good': The Death of an Economic Religion]

Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following WWII. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased as measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.

Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies.

The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.]

The financial collapse of the US is tragic enough but complicated by the fact that Bush stole your money in order to commit capital crimes --crimes for which he could be executed when found guilty as charged. There is a place in the dock for Bush. [See: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441]

The GOP hopes to deflect attention from its traditional marching orders. The GOP raison d'etre is simply this: pass tax cuts and other measures that enrich only the ruling elites far beyond what they might have achieved solely on merit. IF you are NOT among the top one percent of the nation, the GOP has ROBBED you under the rubric of "cutting taxes".

Wealth does not originate with rich people.

Thanks to GOP policies which, in fact, concentrate wealth at the top, there are increasingly FEWER 'small business' people because small business can no longer compete with HUGE corporations favored by the GOP. There are no more Bedford Falls. The GOP has a vested interest in keeping the truth from the American people. The truth is: wealth does not originate with rich people. Every economist --even right wing economists like Milton Friedman --subscribe to an established principle --the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value has been the basis for almost every major economic theory since Aristotle.

The GOP believes the opposite. The GOP would have you believe that capital creates wealth. Think about it --if wealth had been created by the rich and, indeed, trickled down, the GOP would never feel 'compelled' to pursue its unfair tax policies which are, in fact, the source of their wealth. If what the GOP tells you is true, the wealthy would have already been wealthy. The term 'nouveau riche' would be an oxymoron. The official statistics prove beyond any reasonable doubt that GOP tax policies have enriched an increasingly small percentage of the total US population. It only makes sense to support 'trickle down' economics if, in fact, wealth does not trickle down. The GOP pursues unfair tax policies because wealth does not and has never 'trickled down'. Wealth trickles up and the government always taxes it at its source, its creation! Its 'creation' is the act of labor itself. Government, therefore, puts an unfair 'tax' upon this 'labor' and transfers the proceeds to an elite that has done nothing to create it and, in fact, does nothing to deserve it.

Lower and working classes, therefore, pay more than their fair share of taxes. The government taxes labor and gives capital a free ride, a recipe for an impending economic collapse, a collapse that appears to be well underway and quite beyond anyone's power or ability to stop. But that has not stopped the government from playing it's well-rehearsed role as the shakedown arm of the nation's tiny and shrinking elite.

If because of GOP transfers of unearned wealth to the increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the population, labor is unproductive or impoverished the productivity of the nation will decline and ultimately collapse. That is what we see happening as I write this. The poor are increasingly denied decent housing or food because elites have bid up prices on commodities. If you can no longer afford decent housing, health care or food, you have then, perhaps recently under Bush, fallen off the ladder. It's the GOP way.

During the booming, Democratic sixties, a distinguished economist had written that there were increasingly fewer 'status symbols' available to millionaires that were not also available to anyone earning 20 thousand dollars per year. In those days, a 30 thousand dollar home was a two-story, four bedroom, two car garage affair, perhaps on a cul-de-sac, and it may or may not have come with a pool. Have you shopped for a similar home lately?

Social Darwinism is one of many ideas that have harmed mankind. Social Darwinism is an idea that has harmed mankind by providing a rationalization for the perpetual and deliberate impoverishment of large segments of our society. It does so insidiously with a baseless theory that is not only fallaciously associated with Darwin, it is a 'theory' for which there is no evidence.

In simpler terms, the philosophical basis for the American right wing is this:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? Then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

In those categories and thanks to the GOP, Texas is NUMBER ONE!

Addendum

"It's Like A Whole Other Country"

--EyeSpy

Welcome to the third world. Texas has nothing over the rest of the nation. We will soon be living under a freeway overpass eating cat food while our volunteer military gets its ass kicked to protect our right to eat cat food.

--blufin

Isn't democracy great?

--Nighthawk

Found quoted on the Barefoot Bum:

Folly, thou conquest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who art thou then if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly's uncurbed steed,
Must, vainly shrieking with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
Accursed, who striveth after noble ends,
And with deliberate wisdom forms his plans!
To the fool-king belongs the world.

— Friedrich Schiller, The Maid of Orleans (translated by Anna Swanwick)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ6mje5etlc
The Texas Criminal INJUSTICE System!

---

Treason and Conspiracy: How Bush and his 'Material Supporters' Betrayed the Nation!

George W. Bush, personally and officially, must answer to charges that he committed high treason and capital crimes, but also those who provided him with guilty 'material support' knowing that they would be enriched by his treasonous and murderous adventures against the innocent civilians of Iraq! Bush was bought and paid for by a tiny, ruling elite and Bush has represented only their interests. The rest of us were sold-out. There are two terms for this: 'high treason' and 'tyranny'! Both Bush and his financial supporters are guilty and should be tried in US and international courts.

(a) Offense. - Whoever provides material support or resources or conceals or disguises the nature, location, source, or ownership of material support or resources, knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, a violation of section 32, 37, 81, 175, 229, 351, 831, 842(m) or (n), 844(f) or (i), 930(c), 956, 1114, 1116, 1203, 1361, 1362, 1363, 1366, 1751, 1992, 1993, 2155, 2156, 2280, 2281, 2332, 2332a, 2332b, 2332f, or 2340A of this title, section 236 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 USC. 2284), or section 46502 or 60123(b) of title 49, or in preparation for, or in carrying out, the concealment of an escape from the commission of any such violation, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in any Federal judicial district in which the underlying offense was comitted, or in any other Federal judicial district as provided by law.

(b) Definition. - In this section, the term "material support or resources" means currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel, transportation, and other physical assets, except medicine or religious materials.

Cases and Codes : US Code : Title 18 : Section 2339A. Providing material support to terrorists

Bush's war of aggression against the people of Iraq was an act terrorism --even under the terms of the Patriot Act. It is also a violation of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441!

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441
§ 2441. War crimes

But that is only a part of the many crimes that will be charged George W. Bush and those who knowingly provided him with 'material support'.

(d) Common Article 3 Violations.—

(1) Prohibited conduct.— In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows:

(A) Torture.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.

(B) Cruel or inhuman treatment.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions), including serious physical abuse, upon another within his custody or control.

(C) Performing biological experiments.— The act of a person who subjects, or conspires or attempts to subject, one or more persons within his custody or physical control to biological experiments without a legitimate medical or dental purpose and in so doing endangers the body or health of such person or persons.

(D) Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.

(E) Mutilation or maiming.— The act of a person who intentionally injures, or conspires or attempts to injure, or injures whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, by disfiguring the person or persons by any mutilation thereof or by permanently disabling any member, limb, or organ of his body, without any legitimate medical or dental purpose.

(F) Intentionally causing serious bodily injury.— The act of a person who intentionally causes, or conspires or attempts to cause, serious bodily injury to one or more persons, including lawful combatants, in violation of the law of war.

(G) Rape.— The act of a person who forcibly or with coercion or threat of force wrongfully invades, or conspires or attempts to invade, the body of a person by penetrating, however slightly, the anal or genital opening of the victim with any part of the body of the accused, or with any foreign object.

(H) Sexual assault or abuse.— The act of a person who forcibly or with coercion or threat of force engages, or conspires or attempts to engage, in sexual contact with one or more persons, or causes, or conspires or attempts to cause, one or more persons to engage in sexual contact.

(I) Taking hostages.— The act of a person who, having knowingly seized or detained one or more persons, threatens to kill, injure, or continue to detain such person or persons with the intent of compelling any nation, person other than the hostage, or group of persons to act or refrain from acting as an explicit or implicit condition for the safety or release of such person or persons. ...

--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441. War crimes

Bush and what is commonly referred to as the Military/Industrial complex, consisting of the US military apparatus and the various 'military contractors' who maintain lobbies and offices in Washington DC, undertook a war of naked aggression against the people of Iraq. Every 'justification' for the 'war' has since been proven to have been fraudulent in every respect. Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, for example, was a deliberate fraud consisting of ten year old satellite photos, a plagiarized student paper, and outright lies, obviously concocted by the White House. [See: The Lie of the Century] Who else? There were NO WMD! In every other respect, Saddam Hussein was not then no was he ever an 'imminent threat' to the security of the United States or its citizens. The US attack and invasion of Iraq was and remains a war crime. Bush's order to attack and invade is a capital crime under US Codes and is a war crime under international law and conventions to which the US is bound by treaty and law.

In consideration of 'material support' provided him by his supporters inside the said 'Military/Industrial Complex, George W. Bush undertook a campaign of lies and propaganda in order to justify the war of aggression against Iraq, the true purpose of which was the acquisition of oil and other resources --in other words: the enrichment of those defense contractors and other corporations who stood to benefit materially and have, in fact, benefited from a war of aggression that violates US treaties, international law, and US Codes which require the death penalty for those violations resulting in death!

The US government itself has defined 'material support' in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 to include providing tangible support such as " 'money, goods, and materials and also less concrete support, such as 'personnel' and 'training'" to 'terrorists'

As Bush is a 'mass murderer' and a terrorist in violation of US criminal codes, anyone, therefore, who has knowingly provided him with 'material support' shares his guilt! That includes GOP 'fat cats' who literally lined up to finance Bush's campaign knowing that he would wage an illegal war on their behalf. The final shakeout of those who share Bush's guilt will most certainly include the leadership of the GOP, their biggest corporate sponsors, and media whores who provided favorable coverage quid pro quo!

I charge that the vast majority of those providing Bushco with substantial, perhaps 'huge', financial support did so knowingly! This is guilty knowledge that makes them a part of the conspiracy to pillage Iraq (a war crime), defraud the American people, and dismantle the Constitution in the process.

These well-heeled miscreants supported Bush with 'money, goods, and materials' knowing that Bush would concoct a phony reason for war, knowing that Bush would slaughter millions of innocent people, knowing that Bush would do so on their behalf. The guilty felons and corporate mass murderers bought and paid for George W. Bush. He was expected to deliver. He had been made an offer that he could not refuse. He would not have refuse in any case. It was as much his idea as it was his 'material support'.

Aiding and abetting this crime against humanity was the leadership of the GOP, a criminal conspiracy that pays off its 'base' with huge tax cuts. The effect of these policies are irrefutable and available at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BEA, the Census Bureau and numerous other organization. In summary, because of GOP policies, a tiny elite of about one percent of the population now owns more than the remaining 99 percent combined.

Soon, however, the GOP will have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. Or to mix a metaphor, it will have slaughtered its own 'fatted cow'. The end is near when only one percent of the nation's population owns more than the remaining 99 percent combined! That has been the desired goal and the de facto outcome of GOP mendacity at least since the regime of Ronald Reagan.

The GOP leadership is a crime syndicate whose job is the transfer of wealth to a tiny, crooked, elite base. War is but one mechanism by which this achieved. Check the list of defense contractors! Check how much they've made in the mass murder business! How many 'liberals' do you think are among them?

This is not politics! This is organized crime and Bush is at the forefront, the titular head of what St. Thomas More described as a "'conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth'.

There is wide-spread acknowledgment, even within the party itself, that the Republican brand is currently poisonous. Faced with massive losses in November, GOP leadership has green-lighted a save-yourself mentality, allowing its endangered members to go against the party line if it means helping their electoral chances.

But if the situation seems bad on the electoral level, insiders warn that it's even worse when you get down to infrastructure and machinery. Facing an avalanche of losses, the GOP is stuck with an antiquated system of fundraising, a tired leadership, and a president many Americans loathe.

"There is a phenomenal arrogance like a fog that has clouded people's thinking and ability to see what is real," said Nicole Sexton, a longtime Republican fundraiser and former Director of Finance for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "We have to go down in history as some of the worst messengers. And President Bush has been horrible. Everything he does deems calculated and insincere. The same was true with Bill Clinton but he at least had the ability to seem sincere. With Bush, people are throwing stones and tomatoes at him [and he hasn't changed]."

--GOP Insider Eviscerates Bush And Party: Just "Phenomenal Arrogance"

' With all due respect to Vince Bugliosi, I have been saying for YEARS that Bush has committed mass murder, war crimes, and other capital crimes, under various statutes and International Treaties. I commend him for coming forward so forcefully and eloquently.

A two-day conference on obtaining prosecutions of high level American war criminals will open September 13th, in Andover, Mass. The conference will explore the legal grounds for, and plan for, obtaining prosecutions of President Bush and top officials of his Administration for war crimes.

In the tradition of America’s Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War II, Justice Robert Jackson, the Conference’s purpose is “to hold high US officials accountable in courts of law and, if guilt is found, to obtain appropriate punishments. Otherwise,” said the Conference’s convener, Lawrence Velvel, “the future will be threatened by additional examples of Executive lawlessness by leaders who need fear no personal consequences” for their actions, leading to “the possibility of more Viet Nams, more Iraqs, and more repression.”

--Conference to Lay Plans to Prosecute High Level US War Criminals, Global Research

An October 2006 poll by New York Times and CBS News indicated that some 84 percent of Americans don't believe George W. Bush is telling the truth about what he knew prior to the attacks of 911. In the same year, Zogby reported that 45 percent of Americans support an investigation of George W. Bush by an International Tribunal. Such a tribunal should re-investigate whether officials of the US government allowed or consciously and deliberately helped or facilitated the attacks.

In the same year, 911truth.org commissioned Zogby which found that about half the population of New York believes that members of the Bush administration 'knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." 911 was, therefore, a deliberate act of mass murder perpetrated upon the American people by the man who presumes the office of 'dictator'. Since that is the title he prefers to 'president', then I suggest we stop calling him "President Bush'. He is merely Bush or, more properly, Mass Murderer Bush, if you must attach a title. Bugliosi to Congress: "The Bush administration has gotten away with thousands and THOUSANDS of murders!"

Recently, Bugliosi offered Congress incriminating, documentary evidence to substantiate his charges that George W. Bush is guilty of mass murder. He urged the committee to make a 'criminal referral' to the Justice Department to begin a criminal investigation of Bush and members of his administration to determine whether first degree murder charges should be brought against 'certain members of this administration'. Clearly --Bugliosi thinks the evidence supports not just an 'indictment' but a conviction..

Bugliosi to House Judiciary Committee: Bush is 'beyond all reasonable doubt" guilty of mass murder.

Before the Judiciary chaired by Rep. John Conyers, Bugliosi stated: 'beyond any reasonable doubt' George W. Bush is guilty of the mass murder of our US troops and Iraqi civilians." "The Bush administration," Bugliosi told the committee, "has gotten away with thousands and thousands of murders.

"I will give you words from Bush's own mouth," he continued to an enthralled audience in committee chambers, "that will prove shocking to most of you folks in this chamber."

"Whether Democrat or Republican, all Americans should be outraged by what the Bush administration has done. How dare they do what they did?"

Bruce Fein's initial statement

Meanwhile, Bush --on behalf of his well-heeled co-conspirators and 'material support' --has taken to new heights nefarious efforts to shut up his opposition. Due to right wing policies and media consolidation throughout the regimes of Reagan and Bush Sr, the media is but a right wing echo chamber. No one can, therefore, reasonably deny a voice to folk for whom Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is symbolic of free speech and a revolution in support of it!

Bush may have been within the letter of the law to quash 'free speech' at Monticello, but to do so on Jefferson's soil, is a poke in the eye! The downside for Bush is that it tips his hand. It betrays his anti-Jefferson mindset, his anti-Democratic, dictatorial, fascist bent.

Bush's Presence Mocks the Principles of US Independence

Bush omitted the most important thing ever said by Thomas Jefferson and it was stated --upfront --in the Declaration of Independence.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

Bush is nothing new. 'Conspiracies of rich men' have always tried to hijack the apparatus of state for nefarious ends. Some historians may argue the point that 'nations' themselves derive from the thug gangs hired by the rich and powerful to protect the interests of privilege.

...when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays anywhere do flourish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.

But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!

--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia, Of the Religions in Utopia

Additional resources:

• Impeach, Remove, and Try George W. Bush for War Crimes and Mass Murder!
• The So-Called 'President' is a Mass Murderer
• Mr. Bush Goes to GITMO: How the Patriot Act Makes Bush a 'Terrorist'!
• 'George W. Bush has gotten away with murder'
• The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
• Bugliosi: George W. Bush Should be Tried for Mass Murder
• FBI Evidence that Indicts George W. Bush for Mass Murder, War Crimes and Torture
• Push for New YOrk Grand Jury to Investigate 911
• The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
  
• Los Angeles Citizens' Grand Jury
No Hard Evidence Connecting Bin Laden to 9/11

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

Subscribe

GOP, Bush, Evil, Tyranny

Spread the word