Why the 911 Truth Movement 'Cannot be Stopped'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

There remains probable cause to indict and charge top officials, George W. Bush himself, for the crimes we call '911'. And, last time I checked, there was no 'statute of limitation' on mass murder, war crimes [see: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] or high treason!

The evidence against Bush, Cheney and a gang of NEOCON crooks will prove in court that Bushco conspired to attack and invade Iraq for its oil! It will not help the defense that documents of Cheney's meeting of his 'Energy Task Force' survive and prove that the Cheney and 'big oil' literally carved up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush would have the pretext he needed to attack, invade, and loot oil!

Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. Based on its analysis of PSAs in seven countries, it said multinationals would seek rates of return on their investment from 42 to 162 per cent, far in excess of typical 12 per cent rates.

--American And British Oil Companies Ready To Carve Up Iraqi Oil Fields

As Hitler needed a Reichstag Fire, Bushco needed a pretext --a 'catalyzing event' that the Project for the New American Century would compare to Pearl Harbor. [See Rebuilding America's Defenses; toward the end of this PDF document you will find a picutre of the US Global Hawk which, I believe was 'the missile', as Rumsfeld called it, that hit 'this building' as Rumsfeld referred to the Pentagon!]

Bush conspired with 'rich men' --his elite base --in order to perpetrate the capital crimes of aggressive war, mass murder and high treason!

On this eighth anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11. the movement of concerned citizens who do not believe the U.S. government’s official explanation of those events (the clear majority in poll after poll after poll) only continues to grow, emboldened by breathrough after breakthrough in their efforts to bring the glaring inaccuracies of that official explanation to the attention of the general public.

Perhaps no greater sign of the success of the 9/11 Truth movement can be found than the fact that the discredited corporate media has begun another round of ferocious and transparent hit pieces designed to sling mud at those seeking real answers to the still-unanswered questions of the victims’ family members and real justice for the first responders who are dying as a direct result of government lies. From Psychology Todays ridiculous hit piece insisting that skepticism about government explanations is a form of insanity to National Geographic firing explosives into a fiberglass chicken coop, it seems that the corporate media is becoming more and more desperate (and even downright comical) in their attempts to stop people from questioning the very 9/11 commission that has been called a fraud by six of its own commissioners.

Most of these attacks on 9/11 end up focusing not on the evidence itself, but on one inevitable question: “Why do ‘conspiracy theorists’ believe what they believe?” Of course, this question is coming from the self-same media conglomerates who speak in unanimity against 9/11 Truth and then wonder why newspapers are going the way of the dodo and people are turning off the TV in droves, so we can assume the question is either disingenous or that the corporate media bigwigs are, shall we say, intellectually challenged.

--James Corbett, The Corbett Report

The biggest hole in the official theories is the fact that there is absolutely no forensic evidence supporting the Bush conspiracy theory. Certainly --no airliner wreckage was recovered in New York and the surviving steel was ordered destroyed by Bush but not before traces of thermate were recovered and subsequently tested, analyzed and confirmed. The presence of thermate is very nearly the smoking gun. Without thermate, the steel girders of WTC would never have weakened, collapsed or melted as they were, in fact, photographed.

WTC 7 is another fatal flaw, a nail in the Bushco coffin. WTC 7 was not struck by any airliner of any size. It was seen standing behind a BBC correspondent even as she reported its collapse. Clearly --she had gotten the official 'release' but screwed up by reporting this planned event before it, in fact, occurred. The fall of WTC 7, never struck by airliners, is a classic example of a controlled demolition.

At the Pentagon, only one engine rotor was found --not the two that would have survived to be recovered had an airliner struck the Pentagon. Moreover, the only rotor found was about one third the size of two rotors that would have been recovered had a 757 struck the Pentagon. There was no fuselage, no airliner wreckage! Unless the laws of the conservation of matter and energy have been repealed, a 757 weighing some 80 tons or more would have left behind just that much debris. Certainly, the small of amount of debris might have been carried off in wheelbarrows.

Desperate 'officialists' concede that no airliner fuselage was found. It 'vaporized', they 'explain'. Nonsense! The fuselage is of aluminum and according to every scientific, official or university source I have found, aluminum will not 'vaporize' at temperatures less than 11000 degrees F. According to NASA, 11000 degrees F is 1000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. So --you can rule that out!

Officialists also claim that DNA testing confirmed both passenger and 'hijacker' IDs. There are at least two things wrong with that assertion: 1) there are NO Arab names on the official autopsy report released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA; 2) if the fuselage vaporized as is claimed, then no DNA IDs would have been possible. DNA is often said to decompose when heated but, in fact, the effect is even worse: it literally melts. As heat is applied, bonds that join the two nucleotide strands may break.

The two molecules [nucleotides] are stabilized in this structure due to noncovalent bonds, mostly hydrogen bonds and vanderWaals forces. These bonds are not strong; accordingly, when the temperature rises sufficiently, the double helix is said to "melt" into its two component molecules, and will reassociate upon slow cooling under appropriate salt conditions. So, the issue is not decomposition so much as disassociation upon exposure to too high a temperature; and the reason for the disassociation is that the energy input of the heat overcomes the ability of the noncovalent bonds to keep the molecules together.

--US Energy Department, Molecular Biology Archive, DNA Decomposition

At the 11000 degrees F required to 'vaporize' the fuselage, I dare say no DNA would have survived, no DNA ids would have been possible at all. So --which is it? Did the fuselage vaporize or not? Were the DNA ids performed or not? The officialists simply cannot have it both ways.

The truth, however, explains everything. Lies explain nothing. The truth is: no airliner struck the Pentagon. The only 'official autopsy report' known to exist was released to Dr. Olmsted via his FOIA request. There were NO ARABS on the list!

Take the case of Flight 93. Saeed Alghamdi has been protesting his innocence of 911 since the event. If Saeed were guilty, he would be dead! If Saeed were guilty he would have been blown to smithereens over PA. A dead Saeed might be evidence of Bush's theory. Alive, he is living proof that Bush's official conspiracy theory is a pack of black hearted lies that have harmed the American people, the world and, most certainly, the cause of peace.

Bush is the primary suspect for several reasons:

• Those who lie about crimes do so to cover up guilt. Bush has never told the truth about 911.
• Bush has not merely lied; he has actively, consistently and deliberately tried to cover up the crime of 911 with overt and identifiable instances of obstruction of justice, lies, and overt intimidation. This --I believe --is persuasive evidence of his guilt and/or complicity.

Tim Roemer let the cat out of the bag when, like Donald Rumsfeld, he referred to a 'missile' that struck the Pentagon. And that, I believe, is the truth that Bush would cover up and lie about.

If Bush had been innocent of the crime, he would have ordered every scrap to be placed in evidence. Instead, he obstructed justice by ordering destroyed the evidence of mass murder an high treason. If Bush had been innocent, why would he have ordered the destruction of evidence that might have proved his innocence in court? Within months of WTC collapse, tons of metal from the collapsed towers were sold to scrap yards in New Jersey where it was then sold to recyclers in the US and overseas. As the recent discovery of thermate proves, every shred, every scrap of 911 metal was evidence which, if examined, might have explained the collapse or pointed an accusing, indicting finger! Perhaps it is that last fact that explains the haste with which this 'evidence' was destroyed.

If Bush were innocent, then why would he have ordered the destruction of evidence that might have exonerated him? The only answer is that Bush is not innocent and ordered the destruction of evidence that would, in fact, prove his guilt of the crimes of mass murder and high treason against the sovereign people of the United States, the Constitution, US Criminal Codes and every moral code known to mankind since leaving the caves and savannahs.

Let's get on with the trials. Let's bring the guilty bastards to justice! There is no future until the demons of the past are dealt with, resolved and put to rest. No future is promising that is built upon a foundation of lies, high treason and the mass murder of US citizens by its own government.

See also: A Challenge to American Journalism

This just in:

[US officials, Congressmen, State and Defense Dept. officials Bribed for Nuclear Secrets! Can you say wide spread high treason in the US Government? ]

Broke the news on air tonight. 4,000 word cover story on FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in The American Conservative to hit stands and web tomorrow, by former CIA agent Phil Giraldi.

We'll pick this up tomorrow after I get a look at it. You East Coasters will likely beat me to it. But here's the teaser from TAC...:

There’s a new issue of The American Conservative going to press today, and it includes a story that will make more than a few congressmen and foreign lobbyists intensely uncomfortable: an in-depth interview between Phil Giraldi and FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. She tells us exactly how Turkish intelligence have penetrated national secrets, suborned government officials, and blackmailed Congress. It’s going to be explosive.

Good. Rightwingers are covering it. So hopefully that means the "liberal media" will now pay attention!

UPDATE 9/18/09 1:15pm PT: Sibel posted the cover over at her site, and I've added it above. She also notes that the story is currently online available online to subscribers only until Monday when they'll release "a major press release" along with the print version out the same day. The story should then be available to all online on Tuesday.

The cover title: "Whose Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?: The gagged FBI whistleblower on espionage, al-Qaeda, and secrets for sale"

In an email she just sent me just now, she notes: "We've been getting foreign
MSM inquiries; tons. Zilch here; so far..."

Not much of a surprise by now. After all, what U.S. media would possibly care about members of the U.S. Congress and high-ranking State and Defense Dept. officials taking bribes, being blackmailed, and enabling the theft and sale of U.S. nuclear secrets? Even if the allegations came under sworn and video-taped deposition by a former FBI translator who overheard such things first hand. Non-story, apparently.

--Explosive' Sibel Edmonds Cover Story at 'The American Conservative'

911, War, and Paul O'Neill

---

Tea Bagger Bigotry Exposed

The GOP has either allied themselves with the bigot-based 'tea bagger' movement or it is the instigator of it. Just when I had come to believe that the GOP could not possibly sink lower, it is now clear to me that this endemically bigoted party is positioned to exceed all previous lies, idiocy and hate talk spewed on that party's behalf by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and a legion of venom filled wannabes. Indeed, the GOP --apres Bush --is a deluge, a jack-booted army of right wing hate mongers.

Now --let's clear up another issue. A heavily-trafficked site [What Really Happened] which often links to my articles has referenced my article with the following lines:

Yeah, they are really desperate to sell this idea that anyone unhappy with the government must be a racist. [emphasis mine, LH]

Let me make this clear: NO ONE TELLS ME WHAT TO WRITE! There is no 'they' who dictated any content to me whatsoever! There is no 'they' and I resent the implication that my thoughts and my opinions were dictated to me in any way whatsoever by some mysterious and unidentified 'they' !!

Is that clear?

No one else is responsible for the content of this blog and no one tells me what I can post and what I cannot! I reserve the right to cite sources, quote other writers and/or politicians and analysts as well as numerous official, government sources.

More than three decades later we have Sherri Goforth, an aide to a Republican state senator in Tennessee sending out a mass e-mail of a cartoon showing dignified portraits of the first 43 presidents, and then representing the 44th — President Obama — as a spook, a cartoonish pair of white eyes against a black background.

When a gorilla escaped from a zoo in Columbia, S.C., a longtime Republican activist, Rusty DePass, described it on his Facebook page as one of Michelle Obama’s ancestors.

Among the posters at last weekend’s gathering of conservative protesters in Washington was one that said, “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African.”

These are bits and pieces of an increasingly unrestrained manifestation of racism directed toward Mr. Obama that is being fed by hate-mongers on talk radio and is widely tolerated, if not encouraged, by Republican Party leaders. It’s disgusting, and it’s dangerous. But it’s the same old filthy racism that has been there all along and that has been exploited by the G.O.P. since the 1960s.

I have no patience with those who want to pretend that racism is not an out-and-out big deal in the United States, as it always has been. We may have made progress, and we may have a black president, but the scourge is still with us. And if you needed Jimmy Carter to remind you of that, then you’ve been wandering around with your eyes closed.

Glenn Beck, one of the moronic maestros of right-wing radio and TV, assures us that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Some years ago, as the watchdog group Media Matters for America points out on its Web site, Beck said he’d like to beat Representative Charles Rangel “to death with a shovel.”

--The Scourge Persists, Bob Herbert, New York Times

The conclusions stated on this blog are mine and mine alone. And there is no denying --except by idiots and/or bigots --that bigotry underlies much of the criticism that is leveled by the right wing fanatics inside the 'tea bagger' movement.

Another racist photo [seen above right] showing Obama as a witch doctor is making the rounds with Tea Party activists.

Republicans accuse Speaker Pelosi of inciting racism with her health care comments.

Democrats are unhappy with proposed tax in the Baucus health care bill.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ed Schultz RIPS the Bigots

Rep. Pelosi said:

I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco.

This kind of rhetoric was very frightening" and created a climate in which violence took place.

I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.

She said some of the people hearing the message "are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume.

Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe.

But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.

--Nancy Pelosi, Statement

Mob scenes are now the GOP modus operandi. Paul Krugman asks: "What's behind it?" The answer to that is as clear and present as is the danger to the American republic and every freedom loving American: the leadership of the GOP, the GOP in Congress, the GOP at large:

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds.

And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received.

So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

--Paul Krugman, The Town Hall Mob

Like pre-war Nazis, the American GOP exploited the mob mentality most prominently in the so-called 'White Riot' --in fact and by law a treasonous 'coup d'etat' which stole the election for George W. Bush. In fairness to mere rank and file extremists, however, it is clear that in the year 2000, it was the GOP leadership that bussed to Florida a white-shirted, button-down mob of right wing radical extremists whose purpose and assignment was to disrupt the election process, to stop the vote count while Bush was still ahead.

Typically, Antonin Scalia would issue the absurdity of the decade: "Count first and rule upon legality afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires." Robert Novak was just as stupid but more succinct: "The democrats are trying to steal this election by counting votes!" 'Logic' of the same fallacious form was heard even earlier from Barbara Olson who said that Gary Condit was guilty of murder not because there was evidence against him but because there was none! That, she said, was proof he covered it up!

Just words from an idiot

The 'recipe' is how every election had worked since the invention of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Voting and then counting the votes is how elections, indeed, Democracy itself, is done. Scalia is a not an intellectual. Scalia is a dumb-ass who has learned a 'trick'. The American west was peopled with itinerant 'snake oil salesmen' who had learned a few big words and how to impress the yokels with them.

GOP mob mentality was again in vogue when Sarah 'Wolf Murderer' Palin purposefully appealed to a 'base' which revealed itself to be most responsive to messages of hate and prejudice.

Democrats have a right NOT to be intimidated!

Certainly, the GOP has resorted to form --exploiting ugly mobs, encouraging them to disrupt legal democratic town hall meetings. I urge that legal town hall meetings be defended by arms and armor. Enough is enough. The Democrats have a right to meet and they have a right to defend themselves against felony violence. They have a right to oppose and defend against a gang of would-be felons!

Why do Republicans make such good l'il Nazis?

The answer lies in research that shows how GOP-types are naturally inclined to conspiracies. That's why they would prefer you believe that conspiracies don't exist. Read Carl Jung and some of the more recent research surveyed in John Dean's book "Conservatives Without Consciences". Conservatives are 'authoritarian' types and tend to sort themselves into strong leaders (fuhrers) and eager, non-questioning followers (good l'il Nazis).

Liberals and progressives are often independent, creative, original. An 'ENTP' type is one of several types identified by the Jung Personality Test, similar to the Myers/Brigg test. ENTP, specifically, is described thus: "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative."

This kind of personality does not make good, unquestioning follower-conspirators! This kind of person does NOT make a good LI'L NAZI. The GOP, by contrast, is over run by good li'l Nazis.

The 'tea bagger' movement is the 'enemy within', the anti-democratic, pro-fascist brownshirts who may have already destroyed the US ideal of a free and democratic republic --something that we have most certainly NOT seen since the rise of Ronald Reagan.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, however, came to Carter’s defense on Wednesday. “Jimmy Carter tells the truth about some, not all, but some of the rabid rage against President Obama,” Olbermann stated, “and is thus the recipient of the automatic blowback from those whose livelihoods depend on enabling the ragers to tell themselves it is not racism that they feel.”

In introducing the segment, Olbermann claimed that he could offer “at least 37″ cases that he believes “prove President Carter to be correct.” He also noted that Rush Limbaugh had attacked Carter’s statements by saying “Jimmy Carter is the nation‘s hemorrhoid” — and retorted, “”Well, I got to defer to him here, the nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid.”

Some of Olbermann’s examples seem fairly indisputable, like a poster used at tea party demonstrations that depicts Obama as an Africa witch doctor, or Limbaugh’s claim that Obama has made it okay for black kids to beat up a white kid on a school bus.

--Olbermann: 37 racist incidents prove Carter is right

Download video via RawReplay.com

Already losers, a now desperate GOP has made a Faustian bargain with bigots. It is significant that the so-called GOP 'leadership' has yet to issue a tepid reproach, let alone a strongly worded condemnation of a movement that is 1) un-American 2) bigoted 3) made of liars to a person!

Until the GOP leadership steps forward and condemns the 'tea bagger movement', I remain confirmed that the 'tea bagger' movement is encouraged by the highest ranking members of the GOP embittered by the legion of failures chalked up by their party since the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• Edward R. Murruow: Why the Fairness Doctrine Must be Restored
• It's the Hypocrisy, the Financial Collapse, the War Crimes
  
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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It's the Hypocrisy, the Financial Collapse, the War Crimes

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Nixon was selling us out to China to whom we are now but a vassal state?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan's incompetent policies would plunge the nation into the greatest depression since Hoover's 'Great Depression' of '29.

Where were the 'tea baggers' when it has since become clear that the US has not really ever recovered from the Reagan 'recession' in which were lost several major US industries to Japan and, most recently, China!

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan sold us out to both Iran and the Contras?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Sr lied about raising taxes?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Ronald Reagan called 'crazy' those made jobless by his idiotic, right wing policies?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr was bankrupting the nation with wars of naked aggression, lying about 911, covering it up, and money-laundering booty to his 'base' via 'tax cuts' and whopping defense contracts?

Where were the 'tea baggers' when Bush Jr waged war on what he called a 'goddamned piece of paper' known to the rest of us as 'The Constitution'.

Where were the 'tea baggers'? The Carvellian quick response: 'they were bent over with their heads squarely up their asses!

The Tea Party Express has hit Washington and while there are many sincere people involved in the Tea Party protests and they have valid points to make about government spending, the entire movement is stained by the fact that its organized by conservatives who are the ones responsible for the mess in the first place and who haven't to this day, taken responsibility for their own mistakes and the economic mess they created by letting George W Bush get away with his disastrous policies.

--The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives

I grew up listening to windbag conservatives denounce 'big spending librul's' and DC bureaucrats. So --what do these windbags do? They support Ronald Reagan who DOUBLED the Federal Bureaucracy and TRIPLED the national deficit. But this idiot ilk will still talk about 'big spending libruls'. Give it a frickin' rest or get a new comedy writer!

Enough already!

My suggestion to the GOP: unless you can come up with more creative lies, more entertaining bullshit, just do us all a favor and just shut the fuck up!

The same policies, under a Democrat, might have been redeemed by the 'Keynesian' increase in jobs which even Nixon would have embraced. But during the Reagan regime, NONE of the moneys spent so profligately 'trickled down'. Following Reagan's tax cut, called a 'red herring' by his own Budget Director David Stockman, the nation plunged into a depression of two years, the deepest and longest since the Great Depression during the Hoover years.

Now --after another INCOMPETENT GOP President bankrupts the nation, plunges it into yet another financial crisis, a war of naked aggression, commits war crimes for which he is culpable and prosecutable, so-called 'tea baggers' are protesting GOVERNMENT WASTE.

Where were these scumbaggers four years ago?

It was the conservatives who, after 8 years of the greatest economic expansion in history during the Clinton years, came to power and intentionally undid everything Clinton did, reversing all of Clinton's policies. And anyone with half a brain knows that if you do the opposite of anything you will get the opposite results. And that's what the Republicans did. And that's what the country got. Now the conservatives are shaking their baby rattles and complaining.

It was a conservative Republican administration and a conservative Republican congress who blew a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus. They destroyed the balanced budget they inherited, and after Clinton had eliminated the deficit, they exploded the deficit to record levels with their war and tax policies.

It was a conservative Republican government that took the country from the greatest economic expansion in history, lowest unemployment in 40 years, a balanced budget and record surpluses to deficits, unemployment and the greatest economic crisis since the 1930's.

So during these Tea Party protests conservatives are showing why the word "hypocrite" should be part of the dictionary definition of conservative.

The hypocrisy of tea party conservatives

I know where these lying hypocrites were eight years ago. They were in Florida busily violating Federal Laws, attacking vote re-counters, stealing an election! They were trying mightily to effect Antonin Scalia's prescription for a GOP win: stop the recount while Bush was still ahead! Or as Robert Novak put it: 'the Democrats are trying to steal the election by counting votes!'

Eight years ago, this ilk was trying mightily to sandbag a continuation of Clinton's policies which --in fact --had reversed previous declines in jobs and GDP, another legacy of two failed GOP regimes: Reagan and Bush Sr.

Here are some facts I wish the GOP would choke on:

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents⁸

Johnson   3.8%
Carter    3.1
Clinton   2.4
Kennedy   2.3
Nixon     2.3
Reagan    2.1
Bush      0.6

-- Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics Survey

The GOP prezzes are at the bottom because that's where their policies have taken the US vis a vis the rest of the world. Those official figures shatter the carefully cultivated GOP myth, in fact, an Orwellian re-write of history, a bald-face lie! Fortunately, enough patriotic liberals have survived the wave of murders and assassination to set the record straight after so many GOP-types have worked so mightily, so assiduously to set it crooked.

Reagan inherited many of those economic problems, but once he cut taxes, America's entrepreneurial spirit was unshackled. We experienced the greatest peacetime expansion in postwar history - the so-called 'Seven Fat Years' from 1983 to 1989. Then George Bush broke his 'Read my lips: no new taxes' pledge, and sent the economy back into recession."

There are several problems with this story. First, Carter actually began many of the policies that Reagan would later become known for; Carter gave the rich a capital gains tax cut, massively deregulated key industries like trucking and airlines, and even increased defense spending. This was also the period that corporate PACs began compelling Congress to pass pro-business legislation.

According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunged it into the worst recession in 40 years. Other problems involve timing: Reagan's first tax cuts went into effect in 1982, but this was also the summer that the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply. Most economists believe the Fed, not Reagan, was responsible for the following recovery. Finally, the recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. The recession began in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.

And supply-siders are careful to note that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. In truth, the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1 Of course, there was a war in Vietnam, which gives supply-siders an excuse to dismiss it because wars are beneficial to the economy. But they are beneficial because governments engage in Keynesian borrowing and spending during them (which could be directed to social services as well as war). Unfortunately for supply-siders, it was really Keynesianism that produced the longest economic boom since World War II.

--Steve Kangas, Economic Performance, The Reagan Years

Such GOP success as was enjoyed by the 'White Rioters' in Florida is a failure, a tragedy in fact, for the nation as a whole. I no longer expect the GOP to see past the end of its crooked nose, to perceive the fact that what is good for the GOP's increasingly tiny elite gang of oligopolists is not good for those of us who have refused to sell out to the special interests.

I am frankly not interested in defending Obama. If Obama did little more than just show up and punch a clock, he beats any GOP regime since WWII.

Anything but Joe, the idiot beats another disastrous GOP regime of lies, incompetence, cronyism, and rampant felony crimes at the highest levels of government. An unemployed paper hanger could have done a better job than Bush Jr ...a dumb ass if there ever was one!

DOWN WITH THE GOP!

There is a growing body of scientific research to the effect that 'Republicanism' is a mental illness! Earlier, Stanford Univ psychologists published the results of their studies concluding that Republicans have more nightmares and night terrors than do normal folk!

Earlier, Dr. Gustav Gilbert ascribed to Nazi 'war criminals' at Nuremberg a 'lack of empathy' and implied that it was the source of evil itself. Hanah Arendt, a founder of the distinguished New School for Sociological Studies in New York wrote of the 'banality of evil'. Anyone who has acquired and read the 'minutes' of the Nazi meeting at Wannsee conducted by Reinhard Heydrich will discover such 'banality', i.e, Nazi bureaucrats discussing disspasionately the the mass murder of an entire race over a gourmet lunch amid witty conversation and 'banal' quips.

Certainly --anyone who can look at Reagan's abysmal record after some four years in office and blame CARTER for it is either 1) nuts, or 2) stupid, or 3) both!

Hey, GOP! Live with this: Carter beats any GOP President since WWII.

Also see:

• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
  
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  
• A Spiritual Mind Movie

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The Impotent Empire

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Two wars against Iraq have not brought democracy, freedom or security to the people. Yet --both wars may have accomplished what their most vociferous advocates had hoped, that is, the enrichment of the US 'ruling elite' of just one percent of the total population, the US oligarchy. The peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer still under an imperial yoke! Terrorism --a transparent 'cover' --was not unaffected! In fact, terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes, as if by design. [See also: Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization]

It was part of a historic pattern in US foreign policy to tell the American people that war was necessary to defend the United States against a threat, or to bring liberty and democracy to other countries, while the real motives for war - the profits of corporations, the control of vital raw materials, the expansion of the US empire - were concealed.

--Howard Zinn, The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency

According to Zinn, The fall of the American empire may be more precipitous than that of Rome which, in retrospect seems to have taken place in slow motion. A date of 478, the date the last 'emperor' was driven from the throne, is often said to have been the official fall. But it was a long process and it is conceivable that it was little noticed at the time. It was not an electronic age.

At home, the US PATRIOT Act granted sweeping state powers to intercept communications and conduct searches without warrants! The right wing monopoly media never bothers to ask: how does one wage war for freedom abroad while subverting it at home? How does a dictatorship bring 'freedom' to conquered peoples?

During the Bush regime, Dick Cheney lobbied the Senate to defeat a bill that would have banned torture. He succeeded! In 2006, Congress passed and sent to Bush a bill that allows the CIA to continue torturing people 'suspected' of being terrorist. The practice is conducted in an American gulag of secret CIA prisons abroad.

Citizens living within the US were no better off. The bill --unconstitutionally --ended the right of habeas corpus for anyone, including US citizens, whom the President or the secretary of defense may deem to be `unlawful enemy combatants'.

In 2006 Congress passed a military budget of $500 billion and arms and oil firms got huge profits, while education and medical care were cut. Chief Executive Officers got 400 times the wage of the average worker, while the minimum wage stayed where it was ten years ago, at $5.15 an hour.

As this blog has pointed out: terrorism is always worse Under GOP regimes. Zinn characterizes American foreign policy in a phrase: "an old way of thinking!". Zinn is right to term it a 'destructive script' repeated at Wounded Knee, the invasion of Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Central American nations such as El Salvador and Nicaragua. According to the US State Department, the US intervened militarily 103 times in foreign countries between 1798 and 1895. Zinn also connects "internal" imperialism with the "external" variety in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with -- we can be sure -- more to come. ... It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.

--Tomgram: Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?

In the twilight of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Valens could not raise an army. The battle of Adrianople was fought between barbarians for and against Rome! The US, most noticeably under Bush Jr, recruited among those who are consistently 'left behind' by GOP regimes. These people are found throughout a GOP waste-land economy.

The real 'dirty work' is outsourced to mercenaries --just like Rome! There is a 'living' in 'killing' as Blackwater will testify, hopefully, at the war crimes trial of US war criminals.

Many writers blame the rise of Christianity for the fall of Rome. Many found it impossible to render unto both Caesar and God. Cultism was as rampant throughout the latter empire as wingnuts in America. 'Christians' were one of many strange cults and still are, stranger still in the US specifically. All are symptomatic of needs not met by empire.

Nothing has changed. It is a subtle argument that Rome did not fall but was supplanted from within and yet survives in the form of the Roman Catholic Church.

The many who saw in Bush the new Richard Coeur de Lion may still be suffering from the shock as well as the humiliation this would-be 'Richard' has brought upon America. So humiliating his downfall, the GOP did not even bother to steal the election for McCain. Better to let Obama preside over what may be this 'empire's' inevitable fall!

Gore Vidal dates the end of the American empire to a time during the Reagan administration when the US became a net debtor nation. But for a brief turnaround under Clinton, the tend lines begun with Reagan resumed and, as a result, we have become a vassal state of China which boasts the world's largest positive current account balance; the US is on bottom with the world's largest negative current account balance. [Source: the CIA's 'World Fact Book'] Even so, America is a different case. Unlike Rome, the US rise to empire was rapid, the result of allied victory in WWII. Unlike the slow fall of Rome, our fall will be as rapid as was our rise to power and global prominance. Gore Vidal believes our fall was begun the day the US became a net debtor nation and that, I believe, occurred in the RR administration. By that criterion, we are like hold-outs in Rome, living among the shadows of ruins.

The American empire began with two acts of needless savagery which equal or surpass even the genocide of the Native American, and that is, the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lives of some 200,000 civilians were taken in a flash because imperial Washington wanted to make a point!

But what point? The surrender terms offered before the nukes were dropped are verbatim those signed later on the Battleship Missouri. For what noble principle were the lives of some 200,000 civilians sacrificed?

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

--Mark Weber, Was Hiroshima Necessary?

It's never too late to do the right thing!

Gibbon, in his monumental 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' identified major developments leading to the fall of empire, most prominently a 'loss of civic virtue' and a series of disastrous barbarian incursions.

The 'Praetorian Guard' assumed power. And, if history is any guide, we should not be surprised if our own Military/Industrial complex, already the 'enforcement arm' of the nation's ruling elite of just one percent of the total population, should decide to cut out the middle man. Should this happen, the office of 'President' may remain but 'appointed' by the Pentagon as Roman Emperors were 'selected' by the Praetorian Guard.

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How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When more and more have less and less to spend, what is an economy to do but shrink? Economists call it 'contraction' but by any term, it results in recession/depression.

When workers are not FAIRLY compensated for their labor and productivity, the income and wealth inequalities that result lower GDP and official INDICES measuring the national standard of living. This has been the case following every GOP tax cut.

GOP tax cuts either bribe or pay off the shrinking class of ruling elites that currently make up just one percent of the US population. This class of ruling oligarchs owes its existence to Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 which initially benefited the upper quintile. Subsequent tax cuts have enriched this class even as the percentage benefiting has shrunk --from 20 percent to just one percent. Every member of this class should be asking themselves: when do I fall off the bottom rung?

Indeed, that the world's millionaire's are decreasing in number does not mean the wealth is being equitably distributed. Rather --the reverse. Millionaires are decreasing because total wealth is decreasing even as the super-super rich, the ruling elite increases their share.

The number of millionaire households in the world dropped from 11 million in 2007 to 9 million last year, a fall of almost 18%, according to The Boston Consulting Group. The figure was worse in North America where the drop was 22%.

The world’s wealthy are getting poorer and poorer at an alarming rate.

The study’s other important top-line statistic is that “Global wealth fell from $104.7 trillion in 2007, measured in assets under management, to $92.4 trillion in 2008—a decline of 11.7 percent. It was the first decline since 2001.”

The rich seem to have joined the middle class on the metaphorical bread line, which is not good news for developed economies that are counting on consumer spending to help drive GDP growth rebounds. The wealthy may buy different goods and services than the middle class do, but their share of overall purchasing power is tremendous. What has been described as a “jobless” recovery is becoming a “wealthless” recovery as well.

The erosion of personal wealth matches the erosion of wealthy pools of capital. Harvard and Yale announced that their endowments dropped by more than 25% during their fiscal years which ended June 30. These institutions are clearly no better at managing their money than people in the top tier of the economic scale are.

--The World’s Millionaires Are Disappearing

Unless trends are reversed and unless the world economy crashes and makes paupers of all us, the number of billionaires will one day decrease as a handful of trillionaires claim world ownership.

As a result of GOP largesse, this 'ruling' elite of just one percent owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. Clearly --everyone not a member of this class amounts for very, very little among the leadership of the GOP. The US 'ruling elite' have become oligarchs. Bush Jr said: 'You are either for us or you are agin' us'. Surely, he had his base in mind. He waged war on their behalf just as Rome waged war to benefit the nobles, as Rome had invaded Dacia for the gold! If you are not 'elite', you are, like most of us, among the ass-kissin' paupers. Revolutions have begun upon less cause! GOP inequities depress the economy.

Deficits Caused by Tax Cuts Negate Any Potential Economic Benefits

Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirm the common sense conclusion that GOP deficits undermine the alleged economic benefits of GOP tax cuts. The so-called Laffer Curve is crap! Arthur Laffer drew a HYPOTHETICAL curve in which additional revenues would be derived by cutting taxes for the 'investor' class. The curve is said to have shown how by cutting taxes for an 'investor' class, the increased investment thus stimulated would increase both employement and GDP while reducing federal deficits in the bargain.

Reagan's tax cut of 1982 put Laffer to the test and his curve failed miserably. GDP did not increase; rather, a depression of some two years --the longest and most severe since the Great Depression --resulted! It was accompanied by massive job losses and homelessness. Tent cities sprang up in boomtowns like Houston.

GOP Tax Cuts For Cronies Cause Recessions

Recessions and depressions have followed every GOP tax cut.

• In 1978, capital gains tax was cut --39% to 28%, GDP growth % fell from 5% to 2.9% in one year.
• 1981, capital gains tax was cut from 28% to 20% and GDP growth % fell from 2.5 to -2.1% in 1982.
• 1997, when capital gains taxes were cut from 28% back to 20%, GDP GROWTH FELL about 0.2% from 1997 to 1998.

It has been said that if you charge too much for something you will make $0 and if you charge too little --same thing. That thought process may apply to a small manufacturer; it does not describe or predict the effects of US tax policy. It is, rather, a simplistic demand curve --not the Laffer Curve which presumed to predict the effect of tax cuts. It was --in fact --a baseless rationalization for making the rich even richer. Politicians saw in it the perfect cover, a way to 'launder' a pay off to the base!

Aside from inflicting upon the US economy what may yet prove to be a mortal blow, Unca Ronnie sold arms to Iran, an avowed enemy of the US. Alone, that is treason as defined by US Codes. But Reagan was not done. He funneled the proceeds to a right wing insurgency in Nicaraugua. All 'off the books'. Reagan arranged billions of dollars in unreported loans to Saddam Hussein for the purchase of military tech. [See: Lawrence Walsh, Iran-Contra Report, Concluding Observations]

Later, Bush would accuse Saddam of having WMD! Who but Reagan, the US in general, could have have armed Saddam? If WMD had been found, what are the chances that they would have come from any other nation BUT the nation that has sought to arm insurgencies all over the world --not in defense of Democracy but in defense of a US ruling elite of just one percent of the total population! Weapons for his oil was surely a part of the 'sweet deal' GOP regimes cooked up with Saddam Hussein.

Reagan removed Iraq from the list of known terrorist nations in 1982 despite objections from Congress. A bargain had been struck!

Defense contractors, the de facto enforcement arm of the GOP, shipped helicopters and howitzers to Baghdad in the 1980s, even as the U.S. Dept. of Commerce gave its stamp of approval to the shipment of weapons-grade botulin poison, anthrax, nerve agents and chemicals needed for mustard gas. If WMD had been found in Iraq (they were not), chances are, they would have been traceable to either the Senior Bush or Unca Ronnie Ray-guns, terrorists of the GOP brand!

Until Bush Jr, Reagan had been the very worst President in US history. Bush Jr was not to be outdone. Both idiot-criminals enriched just just one percent of the US population --robber barons, insiders and arms merchants who were already rich. Under both so-called 'Presidents', every one but the very, very rich got poor! The middle class was left behind and falling off the bottom rung. Surely, you figured that out when you tried to re-finance your big house recently.

OFFICIAL STATS from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labors Statistics and the US Commerce Dept et al prove conclusively that the age of US egalitarianism ended with the rise of Reagan Republicanism. It's all been downhill for America since then. You can thank the GOP.

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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

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

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