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Train Wreck of the Week

by Open-Publishing - Monday 25 July 2005

Wars and conflicts Economy-budget International Governments USA

In three votes the Senate, unable to reach a consensus on how much to spend, rejected proposals to increase the Homeland Security Department’s budget for mass transit and rail by amounts from $100 million to $1.4 billion. It finally voted 96 to 1 to adopt a $31.9 billion spending plan for Fatherland Security in the 2006 budget, which is preposterous. There is little if no terrorist threat in America.

By next June the British plan to cut their forces in Iraq from 8,500 to 3,000 at the same time Washington expects to cut forces from 140,000 to 66,000 by early 2006. We believe Washington is down to 102,000 already. On the other hand Iraqi troops are not ready to take charge of their country now and probably won’t be ready in a year if then.

The rabble that inhabits our Congress is quietly considering whether to destroy one of the pillars of constitutional law - the habeas corpus power of the federal courts to determine whether an indigent has been unjustly sentenced to death by state courts. A bill making alarming progress in committee would effectively strip federal courts of most review power and shift it to the Attorney General. That is right: the chief prosecutor of the US would become the judge of whether state courts behave fairly enough toward defendants appealing capital convictions. It is appalling that lawmakers would visit such destruction on a basis human right that has been painfully secured across three centuries of jurisprudence.

We no sooner write about the Terminator and his $8 million magazine job, when he cancels the deal. Someone must have given him a copy of the IF.

A recent Zogby Poll says, 42% of Americans favor impeachment proceedings if the President lied about the reasons for war and according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post Pool, 52% think he did. The general media, of course, has buried this.

The VA continues its agenda of delay, deny and deceive with our nation’s ex-military. Veterans are being cheated out of their disability compensation benefits. We see and hear horror stories every day. They have even falsified and destroyed records. Twelve recently went to jail for stealing $11.2 million from the families of dead veterans. Doctors are threatened that if they do not go along with ratings boards they will lose their jobs.

A veteran with an injury claim against the VA does not have the protection of equal justice under the law. Instead he is given USC title 38 in lieu of the US Constitution. He is not allowed to have his own attorney represent him, until he gets a final denial from the VA’s infamous Board of Veterans appeals, which takes an average of 7 years. Meanwhile the V.A. has more than 1,200 attorneys, who have nothing better to do than find new and better ways to deny claims.

The DAV is prevented from taking his claim to an outside court and his case can only be heard by the VA’s kangaroo court. By the time you win, if you do, you are dead.

The best-kept secret in this country for generations has been the VA and government employee and executive incentive programs that have been denying disabled veterans their benefits in order to pay themselves cash bonuses for the dirty work they have done. Our veterans are getting screwed at every turn and it is not supposed to be that way.

More than a month ago, GM informed us that they would be eliminating another 25,000 additional hourly production worker jobs, accompanied by the closure of an unspecified number of production facilities, probably seven. Unless there is aid from Congress, which developed for Chrysler in the 1980s, we will witness the disappearance of one of the most powerful corporations of the 20th century. If GM goes under we will lose a priceless, technologically advanced machine-tool capability. The termination of 25% of operating capacity will terminate the incomes of some 500,000 individuals and suppliers of one form or another, a tribute to free trade and globalization. GM is disassembling its operations in the US and globalizing them. Already 45% of GM’s North American production capacity - some 15 plants - is unused or produces models that generate little or no profit. That means more closings are on the way. Then there is the pension plan that is underfunded by $45 billion and effects 1.2 million pensioners and $270 billion in junk bonds, which could eventually destroy the derivatives market. The carnage at GM has only just begun and will be followed by Ford. Not a pretty picture, but reality as we see it today and in the future. As long as corporate America offshores and outsources, the American economy will continue to collapse.

A parade participant in Oswego County was pulled out of the throng and arrested. His crime was carrying a sign that stated, “Impeach Bush.” All stifling of descent is now the norm in George Bush’s America. Bogus unemployment numbers are 4.2% yet, Gallup tells us that only 3% of Americans describe the economy as excellent and only 33% describe it as good. Our FBI has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the ACLU and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace. The main push today as we see it is mostly against left-wing groups, but you can bet they are watching the right as well. Most of the memorandum was compiled by counter-terrorism personnel in the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

Our politicians just cannot help themselves. The House voted to keep intact language in a broad energy bill that protects Exxon Mobil and other makers of water-fouling MTBE from lawsuits. We have never heard anything more absurd and injurious to the American people. It has leaked into water supplies in all 50 states and is a carcinogen. There is only one reason such legislation cleared Congress and that is payoffs. What happens is the taxpayers get to pay for what the oil industry does.

The FBI is now under the full control of the executive office so that our President now has his own Gestapo. Then we have the National Security Service formed without Congressional approval as part of the new anti-terrorism legislation. This new group has already been dubbed the SS. It operates under John Negroponte, who controlled the death squads in Nicaragua. Thus, we now have a Gestapo and an SS. There is no longer independence of law enforcement agencies. We are slipping into despotism as all effective barriers between the President and absolute power have been removed. What George and the neocons have done will be felt for decades to come. Next destructive elements will be isolated, retrained or eliminated. Unlimited power has been served up to the SS to conduct the phony war on terrorism anyway it sees fit. It is independent without oversight. It will provide spying, harassment, and intimidating of dissident elements and make sure the ruling elitists stay in place as masters of the universe.

In addition, the Department of Defense will have the Pentagon expand military activity within the US, which again is in violation of Posse Comitatus. First will come the harassment and jailing of protestors, then the elimination of dissident voices, then the military supervision of elections, then patrolling the streets, then dictatorship. You now live in a police state and your entire system has been corrupted. America as we have known it is dead.

Parents, teachers and activists across the country have become the biggest obstacle to military recruiters. These government agents have no place in public schools because they are predators, who lie to young people and manipulate their economic situation in order to take them to illegal wars for profit. Movements are afoot in some cities to deny recruiters access even if it means the loss of federal funds.

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