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This Is What Democracy Looks Like
Inauguration Day Madman
February 2, 2009
"I'm from the GOP and I'm here to Help(?)"
From tax breaks for the rich; to big bucks for Big Finance; then to mortgage
help for Americans, these Republicans are all over the place. One has to wonder
what their true intentions really are.
(Like I really have to wonder.)
It wasn't that long ago that any plan submitted to Congress was destined for the
trash heap if it included any help for those Americans who got suckered into the
mortgage mess; or simply lost their livelihood due to mass layoffs, business
bankruptcies or any of the other oversightless shenanigans which went on during
the GOP reign these past eight years.
Yes, those days are now ended with these words out of Mitch "Groucho"
McConnell's mouth today:
"a stimulus bill must fix the main problem first, and that's housing,"
-McConnell
I'm getting all weepy inside. This is truly the beginning of the new
Compassionate Conservatives. Too bad they weren't around when all of the
(expletive deleted) hit the fan.
The National Republican Party has become the party of tax cuts. And even as they
speak of helping families who are about to lose their homes to foreclosure, it's
really those very same tax cuts that are on their minds.
But what the Minority Party in DC doesn't seem to realize is that tax cuts don't
stimulate economies because, by design, they're instituted for the very few to
make the very most while the rest of us get very little.
And that makes me very sad.
With so many people out of work, the questions become, "Who is paying, and who
isn't paying taxes?" The answer is everyone still making a meager to mild to
exorbitant living are paying those taxes. And whereas those who pay more should
get more back (in the GOP world of finance), the need is squarely and obviously
set on those who aren't paying taxes: those who have joined the ranks of the
unemployed.
By now we're all familiar with the record numbers of Americans who have lost
their jobs in the waning days of the Bush administration. (And those numbers
haven't gone down at the beginning of the Obama Administration.) But what is
truly horrific is the number of Mass Layoffs, as defined by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
"Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50
initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a
5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset
of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50
or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days,"
-BLS.gov
In 2008 alone there were 21,137 Mass Layoff Events recorded by the BLS effecting
2,130,220 former workers. (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/mmls.nr0.htm) And
those numbers don't appear to have slowed down with the incoming administration.
While these numbers grow, and we hear new Mass Layoff news almost every day on
the evening news, we see the new administration working and trying to get their
plans and ideas into action. Will the DC Republicans become a part of the
solution; or will they stay in their traditional role as a part of the problem?
Can we believe Senator McConnell when he states he wants to help Americans who
can't pay their mortgage?
Can you?
-Noah Greenberg
HOW WE STOP TORTURE
By Victoria A. Brownworth
copyright c 2009 Journal Register Newspapers, Inc.
“America does not torture.”
How many times did Americans hear George W. Bush reiterate that statement, often
angrily and impatiently? Between September and December of 2007 alone, the
former President declared this no less than eight times to both the domestic and
foreign press.
And yet Americans saw the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison. We heard former
CIA operative, John Kiriakou, on the morning TV talk show circuit revealing
details of CIA torture. We heard ABC’s Brian Ross expose “extraordinary
rendition”–the process through which the Bush Administration sent people to
prisons in other countries to be tortured. We also knew there were “black
prisons”–secret prisons in other countries were we tortured people, notably in
Poland and Romania. We knew what was happening at Guantanamo Bay prison where no
rules of law, international or American, applied. We knew that former Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales had written memos that revised the Geneva Convention
rules on torture to disinclude anyone involved in the war on terror who is on
the other side from the U.S. And we knew that John Yoo, in his role as Gonzales’
assistant, expanded those torture memos. We also knew that CIA director Gen.
Michael Hayden acknowledged that the CIA water-boarded suspects. And we knew
that water-boarding is torture.
We knew that there was torture under the Bush Administration because it was on
the evening news, in the daily papers and online and members of the Bush
Administration acknowledged that torture had been used, even though the
President had reiterated that America did not torture.
We saw the photographs, we heard the details.
Americans knew we were torturing, but the majority of us either ignored that
reality, denied it or–among loyal Bush followers–found it acceptable in the wake
of 9/11.
But it was never acceptable and could not be denied and thus on Jan. 22, two
days after he took the oath of office, President Obama announced that there
would be no more torture.
He invalidated the memos from Gonzales and Yoo. He reiterated that the Army
Field Manual–which prohibits torture–be followed to the letter when
interrogating detainees. He announced a plan to close Guantanamo Bay within a
year. He ordered the secret prisons abroad closed. And he also set up a task
force that would have 30 days to recommend policies on handling terror suspects
who are detained in the future and where Guantanamo detainees should be housed
once it has closed.
Standing at the State Department with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama
was succinct: this was a new day, a new administration and by ordering
Guantanamo closed, by closing any remaining CIA secret prisons and banning harsh
interrogation practices Obama said he was signaling that the U.S. would confront
global violence “without sacrificing our values and our ideals.”
Secretary Clinton asserted that she would be focusing on development and
diplomacy. In short, the U.S. State Department would no longer be a front for
false detentions and aggregate torture.
It should surprise no one who survived the last eight years under the Bush
Administration that its leadership and loyalists would not go quietly nor
acknowledge shame. Thus John Yoo’s defense of torture on Jan. 29 in an op-ed in
the Wall Street Journal wasn’t really a shock. Appalling, perhaps, but not
shocking.
Titling his piece “Obama Made a Rash Decision on Gitmo,” Yoo’s implication is
clear–the new president is somehow incapable of comprehending something so
complex as the “necessity” of torture in the war on terror.
Yoo ends his piece with the kind of fear-mongering prediction that the Bush
Administration repeatedly invoked: “In his decisions taken so precipitously just
two days after the inauguration, Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further
terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical
defenses.”
Hardly. Torture has been proven to be a wholly unreliable “resource,” as
military personnel at all levels readily assert.
When Obama says torture diminishes us as a nation, he could not be more correct.
Do we want to be linked with the likes of China, Iran, Burma and Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq–nations where torture is a norm?
Those who have protested torture now ask the Obama Administration to prosecute
the torturers. Torture is a war crime. In recent years prosecutions of torturers
from Kosovo, Bosnia, Cambodia and Iraq have proceeded at the Hague. Should
America be held to a different standard? For years members of Congress who were
also members of Bush’s own party, like former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Sen.
John McCain (R-AZ) have protested torture because they were tortured in Vietnam.
Both men have reiterated that when the U.S. tortures, it puts our own military
in harm's way–torture begets torture.
Yet there seems to be a reluctance on the part of the new administration to hold
people like Gonzales and Yoo responsible for taking our nation down such a dark,
extra-constitutional and illegal path.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) alleges that Attorney General-designate Eric Holder
promised him there would be no prosecutions of Bush officials on the torture
issue as a quid pro quo for Bond’s vote approving Holder’s appointment. An aide
for Holder denies this, but Bond has remained adamant that it was said.
In addition, Gen. Hayden has said President Obama promised him the same thing:
no prosecutions of anyone from the Bush Administration for torture. That
statement, too, has been denied, but Hayden also stands by his story.
In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Jan. 11, Obama was equivocal on
the issue, even when pressed. Obama said it was important to “move forward, not
backward.”
No one denies the need to move forward from the Bush Administration. And
President Obama has been unequivocal on torture, while also leaving the door
open for what he called “extraordinary circumstances.” But the best and clearest
way to send a message to the world that the U.S. is no longer among those low
and despicable nations that torture, is to prosecute those Americans responsible
for taking the nation down that dark road. Otherwise commentary like Yoo’s op-ed
and comments like those of Hayden and Bond articulate a back-door policy of quid
pro quo that is antithetical to the new politics of transparency President Obama
has espoused.
Obama said there is no room for torture in American policy. There should be no
room for torturers, either. Obama should make that clear with a special
prosecutor on torture. The only way to close this foul chapter in our history is
to hold those responsible accountable. No need to water-board them–just
prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law
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-Noah Greenberg