Whole Foods CEO Mackey Endorses Cato Book – No More Corporate Crime Prosecutions
Published on Thursday, June 29, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
by Russell Mokhiber

Most people who shop at Whole Foods are liberal yuppies.

They have enough money to spend $9 on a pound of cherries.

They believe that shopping for groceries at Whole Foods instead of Safeway or Food Lion or Giant or Wal-Mart is the politically correct thing to do.

They probably believe that the President and CEO of Whole Foods is a liberal like themselves.

They of course would be wrong.

John Mackey is instead a libertarian with right-wing tendencies.

Mackey says that Milton Friedman is his hero.

He’s a devotee of Ayn Rand.

He’s opposed to national health insurance.

He’s a union buster.

Read more.

To whom it concerns:

After being a Salon Premium subscriber for a number of years and having
enjoyed numerous of your magazine’s investigations in the past, I now find
myself in the unenviable position of requesting cancellation of my Salon
subscription. I find your magazine to be no longer terribly relevant in my
daily reading. Consider, for example, today’s top offering:

“Four Square for Grown Ups: Childhood games like tag, dodgeball and rock
paper scissors are being reclaimed by adults. Is there some deep societal
reason why people are returning to kiddie fun?”

Considering only a few of the many things going on in this country and the
larger world, it is downright embarrassing that that is your top story.
With wars, rumours of wars, monumental government bungling and intrusion
into the lives and activities of American citizens, unfettered waste of
this country’s resources, both financial and environmental, and corruption
abounding, I can little understand how Salon deems adult “kiddie fun” the
most important issue of the day. Perhaps it is because an otherwise
feckless US Congress is now considering condemning the New York Times for
that paper’s untoward behavior? I’m only guessing, really; but I am no
longer content to shovel money out for this nonsense.

But that is not the real reason why I am cancelling my subscription. The
real reason for my decision is Salon’s apparent editorial position
regarding the ongoing debate surrounding the 2004 election and the
magazine’s incredible lack of interest in the many current fights now
taking place across country as citizens’ voting-rights groups resist the
installation of insecure, hackable, uncertified, private
vendor-manufacture voting machines. Just today, the California Election
Protection Network demanded that the results of the San Diego county
election of June 6 be verified by hand recount after it was revealed that
DRE voting machines were illegally used in that election. This is only one
of many actions being taken by such citizen groups around the country.
Also, the Brennan Center Task Force has just released an exhaustive study
of electronic voting machines, claiming that software attacks pose a “real
danger” to these instruments. In other words, proprietary voting machines,
as they are now, cannot be trusted. At some time in the not so distant
past, I could imagine Salon at the forefront of coverage regarding these
issues. No longer.

In 2001, Greg Palast’s investigative report regarding the appalling
behavior of Florida State’s GOP and its program of targeted
disenfranchisement during the run-up to the 2000 election was named “Story
of the Year” by Salon. Today, artlessly expressed as it is by Farhad
Manjoo, Salon’s current position regarding the well documented abuse of
the electoral system by Republicans in 2004 is not only obtuse but
practically a reversal of its own erstwhile position. Considering the
evidence as it has been documented by the Conyers report, along with the
exhaustive reporting of Fitrakis and Wasserman, I can neither understand
Salon’s position now, nor find any reason to justify it. Manjoo’s recent
dismissal of Robert Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone was simply opinion
backed only by meager, inaccurate nitpicking. He offered no convincing
argument that the situation in Ohio did not warrant further investigation,
which is really what Kennedy has called for.

So please cancel my subscription to Salon, which seems to me no longer
relevant to the larger experiment of American democracy. If anything, you
are now merely getting in the way.

Sincerely,

Kenneth A.
Baltimore, MD

News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
29 Jun 2006

http://www.legitgov.org

Bush Vows to Pursue Detainee Military Tribunals 29 Jun 2006 After a Supreme Court decision overruling war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, Dictator Bush suggested Thursday he will ask Congress for approval to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals.

In this message:

(1) Election Defense Alliance response to (2) report from DNC Voting Rights Institute (appended below)
This open letter from the Election Defense Alliance in response to the Democratic Party’s plan for meaningful election protection action has been delivered to the chairs of Democratic Party assembly district and regional district committees plus numerous Democratic club and activists throughout the state.

Our message is: Now–not next November– is the time to put these expressed intentions into action in the CA 50th CD.

Either the “No Concessions” policy set forth in the DNC Voting Rights Summit plan means what it says, or it is an empty promise.

Dear Cheryl Lilienstein and Democratic grassroots leaders,

Congratulations to you for having impressed upon the DNC the seriousness of the electoral legitimacy crisis. The party’s announced intention to finally confront these issues is good news, indeed!

Election Defense Alliance, a coordinating body for grassroots election integrity groups throughout the nation, is willing to work with the DNC — and any party — that exhibits the serious intent to reclaim the nation’s privatized, corrupted electoral system at every level.

We implore the DNC to immediately commit all necessary resources to an emergency legal intervention in the Busby/Bilbray contest, to thoroughly scrutinize and either validate or contest that suspect election before the deadline for intervention passes.

Appalling security breaches occurred and are documented. The Diebold TSx and Accu-Vote machines–that in under two minutes in the wrong person’s hands can be indetectably hacked in a way to defraud the entire election–spent days and nights in the homes, garages, and cars of pollworkers, violating the state and federal security certification requirements for legal use of those machines. Under these unsecured and illegal voting conditions, the public has zero basis for confidence in the announced outcome of that entire election.

The DNC, as its first action under this newly announced Election Protection plan, must act quickly and decisively to bring legal action challenging the outcome and the protocol of the Busby-Bilbray race, by demanding a hand count of every ballot and voter verified audit trail, with complete accounting for ballot chain of custody since the election to prove that the ballots have been properly safeguarded.

There is no time to lose. The last opportunity to intervene closes 5 days after the official canvass is announced, which is expected any day. Delay or neglect in reponding to this most hotly contested race of Primary 2006 will signal the hollowness of the Democractic Party’s Election Protection efforts going forward. If the Democratic Party allows the high-profile and grossly illegitimate Busby/Bilbray election to stand unchallenged, it will be issuing an open invitation for more of the same in November — when there will likely be as many as 40 or 50 congressional races under a similar cloud.

The California Election Protection Network has issued a statewide press release and Resolution of No Confidence in the San Diego election, calling for a hand count of the ballots as the only acceptable remedy. Velvet Revolution.us has launched a national petition calling for the same. Election Defense Alliance endorses both responses, and commends them to the Democratic Party as the corrective action necessary to demonstrate the Democratic Party’s commitment to its own declared intentions.

We urge you to apply every measure of influence you have to move the DNC to immediately and effectively challenge this election as the first enactment of its announced Election Protection and No Concessions policies.

Sincerely yours,

Sally Castleman
Jonathan Simon
Dan Ashby

Co-Founders, Election Defense Alliance

Ginny Ross
Bruce O’Dell
Nancy Tobi
Jerry Adams
Judy Alter
Tom Courbat
Marj Creech
Bob Wilson
Vicki Lovegren

Coordinating Council, Election Defense Alliance

Referenced sources:

http://www.califelectprotect.net/home.html

http://www.califelectprotect.net/no_conf-resol.html

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/content/busby-bilbray/busby-bilbray.php

Report from the DNC Voting Rights Institute Summit, June 20 2006

Recently, Cheryl Lilienstein accepted an invitation to attend the Democratic Party DNC Voting Rights Institute summit June 20 2006. This is her report.

The DNC introduced the plan for year-round election protection for every voting jurisdiction in the United States. Attending were National Lawyers Council, reps from DCCC and DSC, and various non-profits in support of fair elections.

This excellent DNC plan includes:
Training state party Chairs for year-round election protection.
This will take place at the DNC conference, Chicago, August 18.
A “NO CONCESSION until all votes are counted” candidate position,
and advocating for precinct-based optical scan equipment.
Mark Brewer, Chairman, Association of Democratic State Chairs is in charge of this.

Creating state legal teams to produce state-by-state election code guidebooks for attorney and activist teams in each county.
These handbooks will include information on how to investigate voting processes, including:
voter ID laws and voter rights
pollworker training for consistency with election code
voting systems for consistency with election code
elections administration for consistency with election code
following the election through to the end of vote counting and auditing
The goals of these investigations are,
-to proactively influence the processes and procedures to produce fair elections,
-to pursue litigation where warranted,
-to accumulate data to support legislation for election integrity.

The second guidebook is for pollworker training:
the party is encouraging volunteers to become pollworkers in order to ensure
that all laws are applied fairly and consistently,
and that all voting systems have whatever oversight can be ensured by the pollworker.
These guidebooks are supplements to the ROV training manuals.

There will be a Centralized 888 DemVote phone system for:
Automated answer to the questions: “where do I go to vote?”, “am I registered?”
AND rerouting problem calls to LOCAL attorneys for immediate problem-solving/legal action related to vote suppression, issues with access or equipment, or pollworker problems. Ken Smuckler, Voterlink

Useful print materials for voter rights are available from Jack Young, National Lawyers Council, Virginia.
One of these featured a door-hanger with the precinct location, voter rights and ID requirements, and the 888 Dem Vote hotline number on one side, and “who to vote for” on the other side.

A timeline was offered by Joe Sandler, general counsel, DNC, which starts now.

Recommended immediate effort:
Compare statewide voter reg databases with last year’s databases
to find voters who erroneously removed from the voter rolls,
contact those voters, and get them re-registered.
If disenfranchisement appears along racial/ethnic lines, file lawsuits, get injunctions.

There was also information available about voting systems and provisional ballots, from Election Data Services:
what are the rates of provisionals cast and rejection rates for each state: helpful to determine the amount of attention this will require ( in other words, in states where provisional ballots are not counted, voters need to fight for the right to vote in the normal manner rather than cast provisionals.)
Also contains maps of voting system usage for

every county, and trends in voting patterns.
Election Data Services, Kimball Brace, President

-presentation by Dan Wallach on the insecurity of electronic voting systems.
-presentation by Spencer Overton on voter ID, and studies that show that claims of widespread voter fraud are false.

Karl Rove’s strategy:
Identify all jurisdictions that have a 2-1 margin for Reps, and make it 2 1/2 to 1, and,
Prevent the vote for those not “entitled” to vote.

We know what that means. Onslaught of voter suppression. My take; very important to have strong minority area attorney-response teams in every county.

Well, that’s all for now. I have no idea when this will be officially announced, but the DSC phone banker asking me for money today was able to respond to me that there was a plan for a 50 state election protection effort. He was in Wisconsin at the DSC call center, so it seems that “the word” has been coordinated, already. This is good news… Very good news.

I guess the effort has started to bear fruit.
Please forward this email to any attorneys you know and get the volunteer minds oriented.

And, if you get a request from the DNC to fund this effort, please give.

Cheryl

I’m in San Diego for last night’s Busby/Bilbray events, but was just called from CNN to rush back up to LA to be interviewed for this evening’s Lou Dobbs show. Presuming I make it back on time, I should be on tonight, and possibly tomorrow night as well (6pm ET, 3pm PT).

I’ll also be on Mike Malloy’s Air America program, guest hosted by Laura Flanders tonight at 10:45pm ET (7:45pm PT).

Hope to get folks caught up on the latest Busby/Bilbray stuff as soon as I can catch my breath! In the meantime, speaking of Dobbs, his show on Tuesday was fantastic. See below… – Brad

Lou Dobbs on E-Voting Security: ‘Elections Can be Outright Stolen and No One Would Ever Know It’s Incredible’
CNN Notices That Wireless Personal Digital Assistants Could Wreak Havoc on Voting MachinesÅ 

And Lou is really getting angry about all of this!…
VIDEO, TEXT-TRANSCRIPT and a BIT MORE:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3011

It’s OFFICIAL! Staunch Election Reform Activist Bob Fitrakis and
Community Activist Anita Rios, Green Party Candidates for Governor/Lt Governor will be on the November ballot in the 2006 election. Denise from Secretary of State’s Ken Blackwell’s office confirmed this morning that a letter went out announcing their certification.
Please show your for the Fitrakis/Rios campaign at:

Fitrakis bio:

Bob Fitrakis is an attorney, award-winning journalist and Professor of Political Science in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at Columbus State Community College.

He earned his law degree at the Ohio State University Mortitz College of Law, and his Ph.D in Political Science from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

Clean Elections Advocate

Well known for his support of electoral justice for all Americans, his most recent book is How the GOP Stole America’s 2004 Election and Is Rigging 2008.

This is a summary of the 767-page volume Did George W. Bush Steal America’s 2004 Election?, which he co-edited with Harvey Wasserman and Steve Rosenfeld.

Earlier works include “The Brothers Voinovich and the Ohiogate Scandal” and “Imprison George W. Bush: Commentary On Why The President Must Be Indicted” (co-authored with Harvey Wasserman).

Bob was an Election Protection attorney on November 2, 2004 in Franklin County. He called the first public hearings to investigate voter suppression and election irregularities after the 2004 election, and was one of four attorneys to file a challenge to Ohio’s presidential election results in the Moss v. Bush and Moss v. Moyer lawsuits.

Bob’s Service in Education

Dr. Fitrakis, who won his school’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991, currently serves as the National Vice Chancellor and the Chancellor for Ohio of the International Association of Educators for World Peace. He served as Chair of the Columbus State Community College Instructional Support Council and is a past President of both the Columbus State Educational Association and Columbus State Faculty Senate.

He also served as the Faculty Advisor to the Ohio Board of Regents and served on the Africentric School Advisory Board for the Columbus Public Schools, as a Near East Area Commissioner, and by helping local Columbus youth through the West High School College Preparation Program.

In 2002, Fitrakis was awarded the Golden Ruler Award from the Columbus School Board for his journalism in behalf of Columbus schoolchildren. The local Police Officers for Equal Rights honored Fitrakis with its Best Community Journalism award, and the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio honored him with their Selma Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Human Rights Activism.

Service in Journalism

As a fraudbusting journalist, Bob has won awards from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, the Press Club of Cleveland, and other professional organizations for articles on the Voinovich family, drug smuggling, Ku Klux Klan activities, and corruption in the local bail bond industry. In addition, he serves as Executive Director of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism (CICJ), where he publishes and serves as an editor and writer of the Free Press. The Free Press article “How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004 Central Ohio Vote” received the Project Censored Third Most Censored story in the world in 2005.

From 1990 to 2000, Fitrakis co-hosted a regular public access news/public affairs program, “From the Democratic Left,” offering analysis of political events and social issues, both locally and nationally. This program chronicled the activism of the progressive community in Central Ohio, from Gulf War demonstrations to anti-Klan protests. From June 1996 to February 2003, he co-hosted a weekly public affairs call-in talk radio program, “Fight Back!” on WSMZ 103.1FM.

The 2006 Campaign

Bob has been endorsed by the Green Party of Ohio and will be seeking the party’s nomination as candidate for Governor next spring, along with two other fraudbusting veterans: Anita Rios, his running mate as Lt. Governor, and Tim Kettler (website: www.sostim06.com), candidate for Secretary of State.

“The goal of my campaign will be to win the Governor’s mansion back for the People of Ohio.”

“Both the Republican and Democratic parties have brought dishonor to our great state with their cronyism and insider dealing. We need to clean house and end this culture of corruption.”
- Bob Fitrakis
Together they will spearhead the Green Party campaign to clean up the sleaze that has become so entrenched with the two major parties and their big money patrons.

Bob and his running mates were principals in the battle waged by the Green Party to recount the votes after the 2004 election. Anita Rios and Tim Kettler are both involved in lawsuits against the current Secretary of State because of his official actions which disenfranchised so many Ohio voters and skewed the vote count.

“The goal of my campaign will be to win the Governor’s mansion back for the People of Ohio,” said Fitrakis, when he announced his candidacy last November. “Both the Republican and Democratic parties have brought dishonor to our great state with their cronyism and insider dealing. We need to clean house and end this culture of corruption.”

Election Integrity activists must be very careful about allowing the Brennan Report to be parlayed into a convenient bipartisan rush (sorry) for the shelter of Rep. Holt’s proposed bill HR550.

Please remember, the very cynical syllogism still holds, Brennan or no Brennan: Election Rigging is The Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs; as long as the right can continue to rig (and Holt certainly permits that), they need not fear the electorate; hence, given their governing majority in Congress, they will not kill the Golden Goose, no matter how much apparent “pressure” is brought to bear. With their power secured by compromised elections, all such apparent pressure is illusory. So we can conclude with confidence about federal election “reform” legislation: if it passes, it won’t work; if it would work, it won’t pass.

Going to Congress to fix this mess is a sucker’s play. Allowing even apparently “good” federal legislation to be the chalice carrying our fond hopes leaves those hopes at the mercy of a Conference Committee which will be taking it’s marching orders from Karl Rove. Then the word-up will be “problem solved, move on.”

But it won’t be solved, not by a long shot, it will only be federalized and hence even more under the regime’s control. It won’t be solved until we either: 1) get rid of the machines altogether, or 2) implement an effective mandatory jurisdiction-wide handcount sample protocol to test overall results, not merely the stray machine. Voter verified means NOTHING when dealing with black-box computers. Auditability means virtually NOTHING when chain-of-custody is violated, when there are Blackwells in the picture, when the fees are prohibitive, when results thresholds are set for audits.

If the Brennan Report is used to bring us VVPT, it will be a great boon worse than wasted. Stimulating Congress to act in any way is a critical mistake in the current situation. The only hope of a real solution will come from states, localities, and the people acting at those levels.

It is up to those of us who recognize the distinctions in remedies to rapidly educate those who are first recognizing the problem before they join a stampede in the worst possible direction. We need to put out a position paper, talking points, etc., bridging from the Brennan Report (recognizing the problem) to Effective (i.e., non-Holt, uniform omni-precinct handcount sampling) Audits as THE NEXT STEP.

Let’s get on it. Will have a detailed Effective Audit paper out ASAP.

–Jonathan Simon

From Portside:

Taken For A Ride On The Interstate Highway System

Submitted to Portside
by Mike Ferner © 2006

The 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s signing
of the Interstate Highway Act is a good time to dust
off this review of the PBS documentary, “Taken for a
Ride” that I wrote 10 years ago when President Clinton
visited my city during the 1996 presidential campaign.

Riding a “Presidential Special” from Columbus to Toledo
on tracks that no longer carry passenger trains,
Clinton crowed, “I’m goin’ to Chicago (for the
Democratic Party convention) and I’m goin’ on a train!”

I wanted to ask him why the rest of us could no longer
travel to our state capital by train; why we are the
only industrialized nation on earth that refuses to
subsidize its passenger rail system? And I asked a
question that makes me sick to my stomach to read 10
years later: “How many more billions of dollars and how
many more lives will we pay for Mideast oil.?”

Of course I never got to ask him those questions in
person, but luckily, two fellow Ohioans, Dayton-area
independent filmmakers, Jim Klein and Martha Olson,
replied with their film, “Taken for a Ride.”

Their documentary tells the dramatic story of how
America’s passenger trains and streetcars were
systematically and deliberately killed by what we now
call the “highway lobby.” What makes their film so
important is that it goes beyond vague conspiracy
theories to name names.

Klein and Olson weave General Motors promotional films,
Congressional archives, interviews with citizen
activists, and Department of Justice memos into a
compelling pattern of events that make it clear: we
didn’t get into the traffic jam we’re in today by
accident.

For example, “Ride” explains, the oft-scorned highway
lobby was not born of fuzzy environmentalist folklore.
The “most powerful pressure group in Washington,” began
in June, 1932, when GM President, Alfred P. Sloan,
created the National Highway Users Conference, inviting
oil and rubber firms to help GM bankroll a propaganda
and lobbying effort that continues to this day.

Sloan, unhappy with a transportation system in which
the majority of people rode streetcars and trains, not
automobiles, bought out Omnibus Corp., the nation’s
largest bus operating company, and Yellow Coach, the
largest bus manufacturer. With these, he began a
campaign to “modernize” New York City’s railways with
buses.

With New York as an example, GM formed National City
Lines in 1936 and the assault on mass transit across
America began with a vengeance.

Within ten years, NCL controlled transit systems in
over 80 cities. GM denied any control of NCL, but the
bus line’s Director of Operations came from Yellow
Coach, and board members came from Greyhound, a company
founded by GM. Later, Standard Oil of California, Mack
Truck, Phillips Petroleum, and Firestone joined GM’s
support of NCL.

If you’ve inched through traffic on a city bus or
followed one for any distance, you know why people
abandoned NCL’s buses for cars whenever they could. It
doesn’t take a rabid conspiracy nut to see the
subsequent benefit to GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil.

“Ride” is most compelling when it documents how the
U.S. Justice Department prosecuted NCL, General Motors,
and other companies for combining to destroy America’s
transit systems.

Brad Snell, an auto industry historian who spent 16
years researching GM, said that key lawyers involved
with the case told him “there wasn’t a scintilla of
doubt that the defendants had set out to destroy the
streetcars.”

For eliminating a system “worth $300 billion today,”
Snell laments, the corporations were eventually found
guilty and fined $5,000. Key individuals, such as the
Treasurer of GM, were fined one dollar.

The post-war boom in housing, suburbs, and freeways is
a familiar story. Not so familiar is the highway
lobby’s high-level efforts to determine our
transportation future.

In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed then-GM
President Charles Wilson as his Secretary of Defense,
who pushed relentlessly for a system of interstate
highways. Francis DuPont, whose family owned the
largest share of GM stock, was appointed chief
administrator of federal highways.

Funding for this largest of all U.S. public works
programs came from the Highway Trust Fund’s tax on
gasoline, to be used only for highways. Its formula
assured that more highways meant more driving, more
money from the gasoline tax, and more highways.

Helping to keep the driving spirit alive, Dow Chemical,
producer of asphalt, entered the PR campaign with a
film featuring a staged testimonial from a grade school
teacher standing up to her anti-highway neighbors with
quiet indignation. “Can’t you see this highway means a
whole new way of life for the children?”

Citizens might agree that highways meant a whole new
way of life, but not necessarily for the better. The
wrecking ball cleared whole neighborhoods for the
interstate highways and public protest grew
accordingly. One Washington, D.C. activist recalls,
“this was a brutal period in our history; a very brutal
period.”

The documentary concludes with a peek into the future,
interviewing corporate sponsors of the Intelligent
Vehicle Highway System, a computer-controlled vision of
travel which currently receives the lion’s share of
federal transportation research funding.

“Taken for a Ride” is more timely today than when it
was made a decade ago. Watch it.

###

Mike Ferner is a Toledo freelance writer.

You can purchase “Taken For a Ride” at:
http://www.newday.com/films/Taken_for_a_Ride.html

____________________________________________

portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.

To subscribe to the list:
http://www.portside.org/subscribe

To search the portside archive:
http://www.portside.org/archive

“Some readers take issue with his tone, but none have identified an error in his reporting.”

Sam,

I’m amazed you’d even put such a breathtakingly inaccurate statement into an on-the-record email. I’m assuming you’re a sales flack who hasn’t been reading the discussions, and am now even more certain that Salon is so lacking in credibility that it’s a waste of my time to read it. Please process my cancellation.

Thom Hartmann

—–Original Message—–
From: Salon Premium Help
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 12:14 PM
To: thom
Subject: Re: Special Bonus for Salon Premium Members

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for writing in about our recent coverage of Ohio’s voting irregularities in 2004. If you’ll reply to this message with a confirmation, we’ll process your cancellation request promptly. Before we close out your Salon membership, I’d like to point you towards RFK’s rebuttal, if you haven’t already seen it, Farhad Manjoo’s response, and an editor’s letter from Joan Walsh about this debate. You can find them here:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/06/rfk_responds/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/06/salon_answers/

As our editor notes, Farhad Manjoo has covered the controversies surrounding electronic voting since November 2002, making him one of the first reporters to sound the alarm. His Salon directory page (http://dir.salon.com/topics/farhad_manjoo/) lists the many stories he’s
written documenting potential problems with electronic voting, as well as
the other pedestrian ways Americans are routinely disenfranchised. He’s
interviewed a whistleblower who documented security flaws in Diebold systems, studied independent and partisan election analyses and investigated claims that the GOP stole the 2002 Georgia governor’s race and a Senate seat. He found plenty to worry about in that state’s, and others’, embrace of electronic voting systems, but he did not find evidence that Republicans have illegally manipulated elections.

Some readers take issue with his tone, but none have identified an error in his reporting. I know Farhad approached Bobby Kennedy’s article with respect and an open mind — and so did I. It was disappointing to find such a disturbing claim made with insufficient evidence. If you’ve found any factual errors in Farhad’s piece, please let us know. Ultimately, I hope that the great reporting we do every day would overcome your irritation with a piece like this on which we apparently disagree. Thanks for taking the time to let us know how you feel.

Sincerely,
Sam

X-UID: 27725
> Content-Length: 1711
> X-Keywords:
>
> Given your recent attack on RFJ, Jr., please cancel my Salon account. Your
> standards have fallen so low, I no longer have any interest in
>reading salon.com.
>
> Thomas Hartmann
>
> —–Original Message—–
> From: Premium Help
> Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 3:48 AM
> Subject: Special Bonus for Salon Premium Members
>
>
> Dear Salon Premium member:
>
> Expiration of your Salon Premium membership is coming up fast:
> Only 3 Weeks Left!
>
> Fortunately, it’s easy to renew . . . and if you click this link now
>
> https://sub.salon.com/renew/plusninety.php
>
> you’ll get 3 additional Bonus Months of membership with all access
> privileges and benefits* – 15 months in all for the price of 12.
>
> That’s only $2.33 a month for full 24/7 access to the ground-breaking web
> site that epitomizes excellence in online journalism, with smart, literate,
> and entertaining coverage of everything from politics and world affairs to
> technology, business, culture, books and the arts.
>
> Don’t risk interruption of service. Just click here
>
> https://sub.salon.com/renew/plusninety.php
>
> to renew your membership now and get 3 Additional Months Free!
> Warm Regards,
> Joan Walsh
> Editor, Salon.com

Mark,

Regarding the batch of notes that you have posted today: I also
sense some significant movement on the election fraud issue. Last
year I wrote that (1) given the conditions at that time, the GOP was
certain to win in 2006 and 2008 regardless of the will of the voters,
(2) provided that those conditions remained in place (e.g. “black
box” DREs in place, MSM indifference, and public apathy and
ignorance). But I also wrote (3) that it was likely that those
conditions would not remain in place.

There are four factors which, together, might tip the balance:

1. Bush/Cheney have pissed-off the New York Times, which has
heretofore been a Bush enabler. Will more of the print media follow?
To the Busheviks, it is not enough that the media be net-asset
supporters, their obedience must be total. Now the high-voltage
Bushevik charges of “treason” over the NYT’s disclosure of the latest
Bushevik outrage may pull the Times back into line, or it might be
the final straw that chases the Times off the reservation. If so,
where the Times leads others (e.g. the Boston Globe) will follow.

2. The solid front in the mainstream broadcast media is
beginning to break, as heretofore Bush supporters are beginning to
stray, most notably Joe Scarborough and Lou Dobbs. Dobbs especially
is raising holy hell about election security. In addition, aggrieved
“victims” can become formidable opponents: cf. Dan Rather.

3. I sense that at last some significant Wall Street
movers-and-shakers are finally beginning to appreciate that where the
Busheviks lead, they should not want to follow. They appreciate
this, not out of any loyalty to the Constitution or our political
institutions, nor for any pangs of conscience over economic
injustice. Their concern is rooted in those most significant Wall
Street motives: greed and self-interest. They understand that in the
economic armageddon toward which Bush is leading the economy, there
will be no winners.

4. The public is waking up at last. A sizeable minority has
always suspected that the elections were fraudulent. But that
minority appears to be growing, and equally important, the salience
of the election fraud issue is growing — from “yeah, so what?”
toward “omigawd, we’ve been screwed!” If the economy continues to
sour, that increase in public outrage will accelerate.

As we learned from the era of Joe McCarthy, and also from the fall of
the Soviet Union, a regime based on fear and intimidation, however
formidable it may appear (hence its effectiveness), can be very
fragile. No one wants to face the beast alone, but when a few step
forward, say an Ed Murrow or an Andrei Sakharov, hordes of the
reluctant and the intimidated join in, and the regime collapses like
a breached levee.

I’m not saying that this will happen. But it could, as it has so
many times in history. And in this case (unlike Dubya’s “faith-based
reality”), believing can make it so. Si se puede!

Ernie Partridge
www.crisispapers.org