Editorial -- No President is Above the Law

Recently, the FBI took the step of raiding the home of former President Donald Trump, looking for classified documents that the former President brought with him when he left office. The object should not be to go after one’s political opponent. The object should be to uphold the law. While people, including Mr. Trump, are presumed innocent until proven guilty, the FBI was within its rights to execute a search warrant on his property, provided that it was properly done, and signed off on by a judge.

This action was not taken against Hillary Clinton, who allegedly illegally deleted 33,000 emails from her private server. This action was not taken against Hunter Biden. If there was probable cause to believe that either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Biden committed a crime of some kind, then the FBI would be derelict in its duty not to get a search warrant. 

This needs to be the start of a new era, in which no president is above the law. It cannot just be a partisan witch hunt against a former President that Joe Biden does not like. 

And it is really interesting that Senator Josh Hawley, who doubtless helped lead the “lock her up” chants in 2016, is now portraying Mr. Trump as the victim. That’s the whole problem. For partisans like Mr. Hawley, if it is Hillary Clinton who is the subject, she should be locked up because she is a Democrat and he is a Republican. But if the FBI does the same thing to Donald Trump, then he is a victim.

Mr. Hawley actually calls for the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, to be impeached over this warrant and for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. The problem is that impeachment is reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors. For Congress to impeach Mr. Garland, we need a set of high crimes and misdemeanors, and they must be convincing enough to get two thirds of US Senators to go along. They cannot just be based on partisan bickering.

Editorial -- Daily Kos a Cesspool of Neocon Activity

It used to be that Daily Kos was a haven for people like myself who were fed up with the war in Iraq. Howard Dean successfully tapped into the sentiment, and Daily Kos seemed like the perfect continuation. Wars were considered to be something to be relegated to the dustbin of history, something to be fought only in self-defense.

Riding the wave of this antiwar momentum, Daily Kos and other sites like it helped contribute to the victory of Barack Obama in 2008. Under him, we were going to have a new era. Nuclear weapons were to be abolished. While he was not a pacifist, he was not going to take us into “dumb wars” anymore. His call for hope and change was so strong, he won a Nobel Peace Prize right off the bat.

But then something funny started to happen. First of all, he escalated the war in Afghanistan, a move which turned that conflict into our longest war in history. That was a topic of epic debate at Daily Kos. Some people charged that Kos and Barack Obama had totally sold out, while some were saying that we had to get behind the President. The unwritten fear was that if the war got too much out of hand, it would spread to Pakistan and we would have a nuclear armed Taliban on our hands.

Then came Libya, in which the US turned one of Africa’s biggest economies into  a failed state and one of the world’s biggest open air slave markets. Gaddafi was a bad person, but this was a case of the ends failing to justify the means. 

Barack Obama’s coalition held together in 2012, in part because Mitt Romney was spoiling for a fight with Russia, and the Democrats were able to portray him as an unhinged warmonger. But Obama continued to start the very sort of dumb wars that he once said he was against. He armed Syrian rebels in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Assad. He even sent US troops there, which could have triggered a conflict with Russia. He aided and abetted a coup against Ukraine’s government, which led to the mess that country is in today. He aided and abetted Saudi Arabia’s war of choice against Yemen. Instead of two wars, he got us into nine by the time he left office. So much for hope and change.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton turned out to be even more of a warmonger than George Bush was. She planned to create a no-fly zone in Syria, which could have started World War III. That was one of the most common reasons we heard from people why they were not voting for her. She was one of the chief architects of the war in Libya; her remark, “We came, we saw, he died,” was one of the most chilling and disturbing remarks made, more so than most of Donald Trump’s mean tweets. The only exceptions we can thing of would be his threats to nuke Iran and North Korea. While she did nothing illegal regarding Benghazi, it was inexplicable and inexcusable; there is no excuse ever to be taken by surprise.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos changed right with the Democratic Party. Now, they are no longer an independent voice for the left seeking to hold both parties accountable, which is necessary in a healthy democracy. Instead, they are now little more than a Neocon war site. In their view, it’s OK to start wars as long as a Democrat starts them. It is when the other party is in power when they suddenly break out the Peace and Love slogans from the 1960’s.

They do little more now than threat the war in Ukraine as a game. They cheer on every blow from their “team” as though it were a sports contest rather than a matter of life and death that could spiral out of control at any time. 

People who disagree with them are branded as Russians, Russian assets, traitors, monkeys, primates, yellow, surrender monkeys who make one’s skin crawl, and other such epithets. This is the exact same behavior that we saw from Red State (the GOP equivalent of Kos) during the Iraq War, when George Bush was in power. 

Case in point. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right voice in Congress, recently tweeted, “The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one.

A war that no one will win.

Escalation over Ukraine, a non-member nation, risking nuclear war is a power play endangering the entire world.

We should pull out of NATO.”

We disagree about the pulling out of NATO part, but agree with everything else she said. When you find yourself to the right of people like Rep. Greene, you need to think long and hard about your positions. The Neocons at Daily Kos have clearly positioned themselves to the right of her and now regard her as a traitor and a Russian asset. 

Even if there wasn’t a danger of nuclear war, there is still the matter of gas prices and food prices being too high, stock prices off to one of their worst starts ever, and rampant inflation. This is being fueled, in part, by the government printing more and more money and feeding the beast that is the Military Industrial Complex. 

Hillary Clinton on Rural America and Agriculture

The following is Hillary Clinton's plan for rural America.

America’s rural communities lie at the heart of what makes this country great. The affordability of our food, the independence and sophistication of our energy supply, and the strength of our small communities all depend on a vibrant rural America. Despite their critical role in our economy, too many rural communities are not sharing in our nation’s economic gains. Unemployment and poverty are too high, commodity prices have recently declined, and necessary components to economic security – including accessible health care and affordable education – are unavailable in too many rural communities. We must do more to ensure the vitality of our rural areas—not only because America’s 46 million rural residents make up nearly 15 percent of our population, but also because rural America provides the foundation for the entire country’s economic success.

Clinton’s focus on strengthening rural America for the next generation focuses on four key areas.

1. Spurring investment to power the rural economy. Small and medium sized businesses power the rural economy but many are being held back by inadequate infrastructure, poor access to credit and capital, and insufficient incentives to invest. To unleash the potential of America's rural businesses, farms, and ranches – and create jobs and grow wages for working Americans – Clinton will:
   • Expand access to equity capital for rural businesses by increasing the number of Rural Business Investment Companies (RBICs), which make equity investments in small rural businesses—driving growth and creating jobs in rural areas. RBICs are approved through the Farm Credit Administration, funded by Farm Credit Banks, and directly link entrepreneurs to capital. They help to build "capital networks" in rural areas, which research suggests is a major factor impacting venture capital access in states with large rural populations.1
   • Simplify regulations for community banks to ensure they are focused on funding our small business and are not swallowed up by a never-ending cycle of examinations and paperwork. These banks are vital to our rural businesses—a National Federation of Independent Businesses survey found that more than 70 percent of rural respondents identified their primary financial institution as a local bank, compared to 49 percent of urban respondents.2 Clinton's plan will cut red tape for banks that don't measure their assets in billions – while making sure community banks are never used as a Trojan Horse to undermine Dodd-Frank reforms for the largest Wall Street Banks.
   • Create a national infrastructure bank and invest in infrastructure to improve the country's rural transportation, water, and broadband infrastructure so that it meets the demands of our modernizing industries and creates jobs in rural America. Crucially, Clinton will focus on increasing access and adoption of high-speed broadband so that rural small businesses can better connect to the global economy, farmers and ranchers can benefit from agricultural technology, and students can benefit from distance learning.
   • Streamline, expand, and make permanent the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) to increase the amount of credits available to low-income communities and add new credits for hard-hit communities that have seen jobs and production depart. Since the NMTC was amended in 2006 to ensure non-metro communities were allocated their fair share, the credit has created tens of thousands of jobs and financed over 600 businesses and facilities in rural America.3 This tax relief for long-term investments in rural and other communities will be paid for by raising capital gains rates on short-term trading and churning.
   • Strengthen USDA grant programs to make them less about bureaucratic buckets and more about funding flexibility, leveraging local resources, and measuring results. For example, Clinton will partner with Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges, and Hispanic Serving Institutions to expand the USDA StrikeForce Initiative. StrikeForce targets rural development resources to create jobs and revitalize areas of the country where poverty rates exceed 20 percent—about 85 percent of which are in rural areas.
2. Raising agricultural production and profitability for family farms. A strong agricultural economy remains a critical cornerstone of a vibrant rural economy. Farmers and ranchers supply food for America's dinner tables, invest in farm machinery and supplies, and provide domestic energy resources that fuel small businesses. The agriculture economy also drives America's larger economic success—accounting for about $800 billion in economic activity each year and supporting one out of every eleven jobs in the country. To ensure that America's farmers and ranchers have the tools they need to succeed Clinton will:
   • Support the next generation of farmers by doubling funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program to provide education, mentoring, and technical assistance to aspiring farmers and ranchers. Clinton will also fight to enact her New College Compact to tackle student debt. A National Young Farmers Coalition survey found that 30 percent of respondents said that student loans delayed or prevented them from farming.4
   • Build a strong local and regional food system by doubling funding for the Farmers Market Promotion Program and the Local Food Promotion Program to expand food hubs, farmers markets, SNAP recipients' access to fresh food, and to encourage direct sales to local schools, hospitals, retailers and wholesalers. Clinton's focus on this issue stems from the “Farm-to-Fork” initiative she promoted in New York as Senator.
   • Provide a focused safety net for farmers and ranchers by continuing to make progress in targeting federal resources in commodity payment, crop insurance, and disaster assistance programs to support family operations that truly need them in challenging times, like when weather-related disasters devastate whole areas of the country.
   • Fight for comprehensive immigration reform because America's immigrants and migrant workers play a critical role in developing and supporting America's agricultural economy.
3. Promoting clean energy leadership and collaborative stewardship. Rural America is an energy leader, providing clean electricity and transportation fuels to the rest of the country, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and making the air we breathe cleaner and safer. Over the past decade, American wind power generation has grown 10-fold and domestic renewable fuels production has expanded by more than 350 percent—creating jobs, boosting farm incomes, and driving billions of dollars of investment into rural communities. Clinton believes that America can't afford to cede our leadership in developing and deploying advanced clean fuels and clean electricity that will grow our economy, lower our energy bills, combat climate change, and make America the clean energy superpower of the 21st Century. Rural America's rich endowment of natural resources extends far beyond energy, too, and Clinton will partner with local communities to protect our lands, waters, and wildlife. Clinton will:
   • Fully fund the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which provides assistance to producers – including a set-aside for minorities and veterans – who are working to conserve and improve natural resources on their farms and ranches. Additional funding will be directed toward proven initiatives like the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which provides communities with flexible funding to set priorities and lead the way on efforts to improve water quality, combat drought and wildfires, expand wildlife habitat, and enhance soil health.
   • Strengthen the Renewable Fuel Standard so that it drives the development of advanced cellulosic and other advanced biofuels, protects consumers, improves access to E15, E85, and biodiesel blends, and provides investment certainty.
   • Support the bio-based economy's dynamic growth by doubling the loan guarantees made through the Biorefinery, Renewable Chemical, and Biobased Product Manufacturing Assistance Program. The loan guarantee program helps fund the creation of bio-processing plants and emerging technologies that, for example, convert agriculture and landfill waste into productive chemicals and non-petroleum based materials. In 2013, the bio-based economy generated $369 billion and was responsible for over 4 million American jobs.5
   • Launch her Clean Energy Challenge to give states, cities, and rural communities ready to lead on clean energy the tools, resources, and flexibility they need to succeed. In doing so, Clinton will achieve the twin goals of having more than half a billion solar panels installed in this country by the end of her first term and producing enough clean renewable energy to power every home in America within 10 years of her taking office. This includes expanding the Rural Utilities Service and other successful USDA energy programs and ensuring the federal government is a partner, not an obstacle, in getting low-cost wind and other renewable energy from rural communities to the rest of the country.
4. Expanding opportunity in rural communities across America. Clinton believes that you should be able to live, work, and raise a family anywhere you choose. But increasingly, young Americans in rural areas have been forced to look outside of their communities to find quality heath care, a good education, or a stable job. America's rural areas are each unique, and each faces its own set of challenges—but every American, in every community, deserves a fair chance. That is why as Clinton fights to strengthen the rural economy and raise wages for working Americans, she will also work to ensure everyone has a solid foundation for success. Clinton will:
   • Make critical investments in our youngest learners by doubling funding for Early Head Start and working to ensure that every 4-year old in America has access to high-quality preschool in the next ten years. Rural children disproportionately lack access to quality preschool—during the 2013-14 school year, ten states did not offer a preschool program for four-year-olds, eight of which had a higher percentage of students enrolled in rural schools than the national average.6
   • Ensure cost won't be a barrier for college. For students from rural areas – who attend two-year institutions at a higher rate than their peers in metro areas – community colleges provide a pathway to obtain high-skilled manufacturing, service and agricultural jobs in their local communities.8 Clinton's New College Compact incorporates President Obama's plan to make community college tuition free so that young students and displaced workers can gain the skills they need to succeed. Research also shows a ten-percent gap in college attainment for rural students compared to the national average. Reasons for this gap include a lack of access to college preparatory courses in high school and cost barriers to attending 4-year institutions. Clinton is committed to ensuring that rural schools access college-prep courses in high school through on-line learning. And Clinton's New College Compact will work to ensure that students can attend a 4-year public college without taking loans for tuition.
   • Improve health care access for rural Americans by further integrating telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and other information technologies into our broader health system. Nearly a sixth of Americans live in rural areas, but barely a tenth of physicians practice there.9 Clinton will explore cost-effective ways to broaden the scope of healthcare providers eligible for telehealth reimbursement under Medicare and other programs, including federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics. She will also call for states to support efforts such as those by doctors and state medical boards to streamline licensing for telemedicine. Additionally, she will examine ways to expand the types of services that qualify for reimbursement, such as treatments that use remote patient monitoring technology – while ensuring that eligible services improve health and drive value. We need to harness public resources and private innovation to expand telehealth and information technology to benefit patients in rural areas and all over the country.
   • Ensure that our rural communities have better access to substance abuse prevention, early intervention, and treatment. Substance abuse is striking small towns and urban areas across America. But in rural America, the disease is particularly devastating—between 1999 and 2009, the death rates associated with drug poisoning grew by 394 percent in rural areas compared to 279 percent for large central metropolitan counties.10 In the coming weeks Clinton will release a comprehensive plan to address our substance abuse epidemic.

Zombie Trump Channels "The Sting," Seeks to Bring Back Keystone XL

Cody Cain writes about the movie “The Sting” in Salon.

As the movie shows, at the heart of a con lies a deception. In the movie, the victim of the con, the “mark,” was a mob boss, and Newman and Redford assured the mark they had a secret connection in horse races, which gave them a sure way to pick the winners. They told the mark that if he bet on their tips, he was certain to win.

So the mark attends Newman’s betting parlor to test it out for himself, first on a small scale, and if it worked, he would make a bet to strike it big. The mark places his bet at the betting parlor following the tip, and sits down at a table to await the race. The betting parlor is quite nice with big-boards on the walls displaying the status of various races and loud speaker broadcasting live coverage.

The bell rings and the horses are off. The announcer relays the action as the horses gallop around the track. This one is in the lead, now that one overtakes. And here they come approaching the finish line, it’s going to be close, they’re neck-and-neck, and, the winner is… the horse that was predicted in the tip! It worked.

Except that it turns out that everything is fake. And Trump’s energy policy, in which he promises us unheard of prosperity if we would only embrace his notion of ditching climate change, is fake. Suppose he is right when he said in his energy speech in North Dakota recently that we have 1.5 times as much potential reserves as Saudi Arabia. Suppose we could leverage that into prosperity. It would be like a devil’s bargain — prosperity now for pain later. More likely, it would not even get off the ground as demand for fossil fuels like coal and oil plummet.

This is because manmade climate change is real and the fact that oceans are rising is real. If we do not act and we operate in the cavalier manner that Donald Trumpsuggests, our coastal cities and the whole state of Florida will be inundated. Water farther inland would be undrinkable because it would have salt in it. If you are concerned about foreign refugees flooding into this country, the refugee crisis that this would entail would dwarf either the Mexican immigrants or the refugee crisis taking place in Europe. Anyone who has read Grapes of Wrath will know what I am talking about. If we do not act, not only will extreme weather events happen more often, there will be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of refugees from right here inside this country coming to a town near you.

Ken Ilgunas, writing in Salon, says:

It’s difficult to determine what Trump actually believes and what he’s saying merely to pander to his audience of the day. (This time, it was to an audience of oil executives at the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in North Dakota, where he wanted to pick up unpledged delegates to secure the nomination, which he did.) The sincerity of Trump’s climate denial is brought into question by the fact that he is applying for permission to build a seawall in Ireland to protect one of his golf courses from rising sea levels.

But as confused as Trump may be over climate change, he more than most politicians understands the usefulness of symbols in an election campaign, whether it’s his Reagan-era “Make America Great Again” slogan or his Mexican-American wall. Trump’s call to build the pipeline is a symbol to fossil fuel interests and free market ideologues that he won’t be a pushover to environmentalists.

I have heard certain Bernie or Bust types suggest that he doesn’t mean what he says most of the time. But given what he has said, we cannot afford the risk of electing him and realizing that he meant what he said. Keystone XL would not only be a threat to the environment, it would be a massive threat to property rights; it was being tied up in massive litigation in Nebraska by the time President Obama pulled it. Donald Trump, in a GOP debate earlier this year, said that he was for eminent domain, meaning that a Trump administration would seize millions of acres of property if that’s what it took to “make America great again.”

We have a moral obligation to make the planet better for our children and our grandchildren, not get as much as we can in the mistaken belief that the world is about to end anyway. Neither Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would match Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to the environment, but they are both light years better than Trump. Roosevelt created millions of new jobs through the Civilian Conservation Corps; they did numerous projects to protect the environment:

The workers of the CCC were paid to do tasks such as planting millions of trees, protecting forests from wildfires, opening summer camps, improving national and state parks, and combating soil erosion.

I submit that we must go father than what Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton offer. Everyone who wants work should have work, and we should have a work-based economy where everyone is paid a living wage. Courts could order defendants to get employment to pay fines and restitution and child support. People who have student debt could work to pay off their student loans. The government could pay for one year of college for every year you served.

Here is Bernie Sanders’ plan:

Bernie’s comprehensive plan to combat climate change and make sure our planet is habitable and safe for our kids and grandkids will:

Cut U.S. carbon pollution by 40 percent by 2030 and by over 80 percent by 2050 by putting a tax on carbon pollution, repealing fossil fuel subsidies and making massive investments in energy efficiency and clean, sustainable energy such as wind and solar power.

Create a Clean-Energy Workforce of 10 million good-paying jobs by creating a 100% clean energy system. Transitioning toward a completely nuclear-free clean energy system for electricity, heating, and transportation is not only possible and affordable it will create millions of good jobs, clean up our air and water, and decrease our dependence on foreign oil.

Return billions of dollars to consumers impacted by the transformation of our energy system and protect the most vulnerable communities in the country suffering the ravages of climate change. Bernie will tax polluters causing the climate crisis, and return billions of dollars to working families to ensure the fossil fuel companies don’t subject us to unfair rate hikes. Bernie knows that climate change will not affect everyone equally – disenfranchised minority communities and the working poor will be hardest hit. The carbon tax will also protect those most impacted by the transformation of our energy system and protect the most vulnerable communities in the country suffering the ravages of climate change.

Most significantly, he would do a better job of transitioning people working in carbon-based industries to green energy such as wind and solar. The people working in coal mines are not fooled; they realize that theirs is a dying industry. The people of West Virginia voted for Bernie Sanders because he offered a strong plan for transitioning people. Now, I am not sure how well working in a coal mine would translate into working in solar or wind, but the fact that he would create 10 million new jobs means that there would be a lot of people impacted from everywhere in the county.

Furthermore, Bernie Sanders ties in climate change to Citizens United. He rightly says that too many politicians are too beholden to big money interests like big oil and big coal and big fracking. He has shown that running a campaign based on small donations can still be competitive.

Hillary Clinton takes a different approach to fighting climate change, but one that is also very ambitious.

Create good-paying jobs by making the United States the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.

Set national goals to have 500 million solar panels installed; generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America; cut energy waste in homes, schools, and hospitals by a third; and reduce American oil consumption by a third.

Lead the world in the fight against climate change by bringing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below what they were in 2005 within the next decade—and keep going.

And one of her initiatives could directly benefit the local economy.

Launch a $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge to partner with states, cities, and rural communities and give them the tools and resources they need to go beyond federal standards in cutting carbon pollution and expanding clean energy. The Clean Energy Challenge will also help ensure all Americans share in the benefits of a clean energy economy by encouraging solar and energy efficiency investments in low-income communities.

All the communities where I live are low-income communities (meaning they qualify for Community Development Block Grants), meaning that they would qualify for this program and could get a lot of money. There is local interest by certain landowners in hosting wind farms; towns or our country or a wind company could pay the landowners to host the windmills, and then turn around and sell the electricity to utilities, which are seeking to comply with requirements to produce cleaner and cleaner energy. I don’t know all the details of this program yet, but it would be something to look into. If that’s what we have to do to revive the area economy and keep people on the farm, that’s what we have to do.

Neither plan is perfect because I feel we can’t do enough to get people who want work employment, but both plans are light years better than anything Donald Trump offers. His energy plans would not benefit our local economy to our knowledge, but they could bring economic refugees from other parts of the country in a few decades’ time.

Donald Trump Carrying Out Vendetta Against Obama Over Trump University

Julianne Hing of The Nation writes that Donald Trump’s racist tirades against Judge Curiel deflect from the larger issue of for-profit colleges and universities.

It was a classic Trump move: create bogeymen out of thin air in order to prop up his self-imagined victimhood; home in on a person’s race or sex as the basis for his attacks; and then antagonize as a form of diversion from the matter at hand. That matter would be Trump University, the mogul’s real-estate courses that purportedly taught customers how to become like Trump, for as much as $35,000, or starting at the low, low price of $1,495. The lawsuit alleges that far from teaching students actual real-estate expertise, Trump ran a fraudulent business scheme.

Throughout the 2000’s, there were all these TV commercials from private universities saying how easy it would be to get your degree. One in particular showed this young lady at a job interview trying to convince the interviewer that she should have the job because she’s got a brilliant personality. Naturally, Donald Trump wanted to get in on the action.

Take, for instance, the 2010 Senate testimony of Joshua Pruyn, a former admissions representative for Westwood College, a for-profit chain of, at the time, 17 campuses. Pruyn was technically an admissions advisor, but in reality his position was that of a glorified sales rep. “During the interview, we were taught to portray ourselves as advisors looking out for the students’ best interests and ensuring they were a good fit for the school. This fake interview would allow the representative to ask students questions to uncover a student’s motivators and pain points—their hopes, fears, and insecurities—all of which would later be used to pressure a student to enroll,” Pruyn testified.
The for-profit schools industry targeted people of color, poor people, and veterans because they more likely to be eligible for public financial aid like Pell Grants. This much-parodied Everest College commercial should be very familiar with anyone who watches daytime television.

Donald Trump, of course, used these tactics to get people to sign up. No money? No problem; all you had to do was max out your credit card. The instructors were handpicked by Donald Trump (false) and you would get in on all his secrets about selling real estate. The catch was that if you had a lot of questions you couldn’t figure out, you had to sign up for even more expensive courses.

One episode on The Apprentice showed the low opinion Donald Trump has about higher education. He ordered his two teams to teach a class — that was the only instruction or guidance they had. I’ve always maintained that either you connect with a student or you don’t. But having gotten a teaching degree, I can say for a fact that you can’t always go into a teaching setting and expect to be good at it. Neither group scored particularly well; one group picked a good topic but botched up the lesson; the other picked a bland topic but presented it really well. You have to know the law, you have to know how to manage your students, you have to know how to prepare and assess, you have to know how to maintain discipline. And even with 4-6 years of preparation, your preparation does not cover every possible situation that can occur.

I submit that Donald Trump flirted with the White House in 2012 and is running now in part because he has a personal vendetta against Obama over this issue. After 2010-11, the President began cracking down hard on these private universities, the year after he got in on the action. Some private universities are good, but others are just in the business of taking your money. I submit that if they are not willing to do the hard work of proving that they offer value to the student in return for their money, they should not be in business.

Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, while their plans are not perfect, offer improvements on the present situation. Both are far superior to Donald Trump and his plan to fleece people out of their money through more outfits like Trump “University.” Hillary Clinton’s plan:

Students should never have to borrow to pay for tuition, books, and fees to attend a four-year public college in their state under the New College Compact. Pell Grants are not included in the calculation of no-debt-tuition, so Pell recipients will be able to use their grants fully for living expenses. Students at community college will receive free tuition.

Students will do their part by contributing their earnings from working 10 hours a week.

Families will do their part by making an affordable and realistic family contribution.

The federal government will make a major investment in the New College Compact by providing grants to states that commit to these goals, and by cutting interest rates on loans.

States will have to step up and meet their obligation to invest in higher education by maintaining current levels of higher education funding and reinvesting over time.

Colleges and universities will be accountable for improving outcomes and controlling costs to ensure that tuition is affordable and that students who invest in college leave with a degree.

We will encourage innovators who design imaginative new ways of providing a valuable college education to students—while cracking down on abusive practices that burden students with debt without value.

A $25 billion fund will support HBCUs, HSIs, and other MSIs serving a high percentage of Pell Grant recipients to help lower the cost of attendance and improve student outcomes at low-cost, modest-endowment nonprofit private schools.

Hillary’s plan is not perfect because it expects states to contribute. This could lead to another situation down the road where states could refuse to pay their fair share, and the courts agree with them similar to what happened to Obamacare. Also, Hillary’s plan to have students work 10 hours a week could create a lot more competition for jobs, meaning that many would be left out — and still be saddled with debt when they leave college. A lot depends on the college and class, but some courses are particularly rigorous or the concepts are completely foreign, making it challenging for certain students to balance work and classroom instruction.

While Hillary’s plan would cover community college and room and board, Bernie’s plan would cover tuition.

Bernie introduced the College for All Act, which would “eliminate the $70 billion dollar tuition costs at all 4-year public colleges and universities.” To qualify, states would have to foot 33 percent of the bill (the federal government would sponsor the rest) and take various steps to maintain or increase expenditure on improving opportunities for students and faculty.

He would also pay for it with a Robin Hood Tax on financial speculation. Like Hillary’s plan, Bernie’s plan would risk Republican governors and legislatures opting out for political reasons like they are with Obamacare, leaving millions in the lurch. In other words, both plans would make headway, but would not completely address the problem of student debt.

On the other hand, both plans would be light years better than what Donald Trump would offer. He would abolish the Department of Education completely.

Trump didn’t go into detail of what he meant by local education or how to educate the children from South Carolina and New York, but he’s fairly certain that he would rid the country of the Department of Education.
For what it’s worth, the Department of Education might be marred down in bureaucracy like other government departments, but it still has significance. From early education to student loan reform to watching over for-profit schools and how well students are treated, the Dept. of Ed certainly has its place. It’s how low-income students receive Pell grants and how we keep track of school performance. Some federal oversight is needed when it comes to a benchmarked way of monitoring education in America.
Trump also failed to mention, or wasn’t given an opportunity, how he would regulate or monitor education in this country. Likely believing that principles of the free market will work for education, his ideas surrounding education are far too lightweight at the moment to believe that a Trump presidency would be good for students in America.

So, Donald Trump would not regulate it at all. Let the free markets decide. That would allow Donald Trump to restart Trump University and let it run rampant since there would no longer be a US Department of Education to regulate them. If George Bush fleeced the treasury of trillions to pursue his personal vendetta against Saddam,Donald Trump would not only fleece the treasury, he would fleece all of us through Trump University and other such outfits.

Would You Want Hillary Clinton (or Donald Trump) Spying on Everything You Do?

You can agree with what Edward Snowden or disagree with it. But there were very clear reasons why he did what he did. The government had a culture of retaliation against any whistleblowers. Retaliation that ended careers. Mark Hertsgaard, in a new book out, discusses the problem:

On May 22, my own exposé of a secret new chapter in Snowden’s story was published in my book, Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden. The exposé details extraordinary revelations from John Crane, a former senior Defense Department official who has come forward publicly for the first time about what he witnessed inside the Pentagon.

A solidly built Virginian with flecks of gray in a neatly trimmed chinstrap beard, Crane had been an assistant inspector general at the Pentagon, where he’d handled whistleblower cases from 2004 until 2013, when his bosses forced him out because he insisted on standing up for the legal treatment of whistleblowers. In dozens of hours of interviews, Crane told me how his superiors, allegedly, broke the law repeatedly while dealing with whistleblowers—­obstructing justice, withholding and probably destroying evidence, and then lying to a federal judge about it, among other crimes.

Given this bureaucratic hostility to whistleblowers, Crane said he understood why Snowden might decide his only workable option for exposing the NSA’s surveillance was to break the law by leaking documents to the press. Yet Crane lamented Snowden’s actions. “Someone like Snowden should not have felt the need to harm himself just to do the right thing,” Crane told me.

Earlier, Thomas Drake blew the whistle on the same NSA activities that Snowden did, only he went through the official channels. The NSA is the agency which spies on all of us in the name of "stopping terrorism." They have gone as far as to spy on foreign leaders, including allies of ours such as Germany.

In return for his obedience, Drake’s house was raided in 2007. He was fired, stripped of his security clearance, threatened with life in prison, and eventually reduced to working as a clerk in an Apple store, the only job he could find.

Doing that is just like walking through the open door that Wal-Mart invites its associates to walk through if they have a problem. What they don’t tell you is that the open door can lead right out onto the street.

Mr. Crane noted in the book that his superiors would “probably destroy evidence,” among other things. This is in violation of President Obama’s executive order, which states:

(a) In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) restrain competition; or
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.

But this order is being flouted all the time. The Pentagon and the Police State apparatus is becoming a state within a state, answerable to nobody. Billions of taxpayer dollars is going to weapons systems we don’t need instead of shoring up our infrastructure or paying our servicemen adequate wages. While our roads and bridges and water systems are crumbling around us, the Pentagon is getting more and more money even though there is no accountability whatsoever. The reason your lettered roads are in such bad shape are because all the money is going to feed a bloated bureaucracy instead.

The question is simple — do you want Hillary Clinton spying on what you do? Or if you support her enthusiastically and were Berned Out, would you want Donald Trump to do so? It is not the government’s business what you do online, where you shop, what sites you visit, what social networks or groups you join. You may say that you do nothing wrong, but the next logical step for the government is to take that authority out of your hands. It is like an antichrist, usurping the throne of God. Instead of what you do being between you and your god, conscience, sense of ethics, or self-interest, it’s up to Big Brother to tell you what to do.

In order to restore public confidence in our government, we need more whistleblowers who will come forward. We need to honor them if their information leads to concrete changes for the better in how government works. We need to punish any kind of retaliation against the information they provide. The government started taking steps in the right direction when they started cracking down on sexual harassment in the military, but much more needs to be done. We will not root out corruption in our system until we honor whistleblowers, not punish them.

Why Bernie Keeps Winning -- Reclaiming the Legacy of the New Deal

One of the reasons Bernie keeps winning is that the Democratic Party has lost its roots. At the close of the primary, we need to get back to the promise of the New Deal. John Nichols writes:

About last week’s reports that Clinton was soliciting support from Republican donors who were unsettled by Trump, Sanders said on Friday, “Those are the kinds of things that make not only my supporters, but millions of Americans, nervous.”

Sanders argues that Democrats must recognize that, in many states, the dynamics of a fall race against Trump will not follow classic Democrat-versus-Republican or left-versus-right calculations. There’s an up-versus-down dynamic, as well, and the senator says Democrats must build a broad coalition of Americans who are angered by economic inequality. Noting reports that Clinton “is now reaching out to Jeb Bush’s fundraisers in order to raise money from them,” Sanders says “that really casts a doubt on the parts of millions of Americans.”

“Are you really going to stand up for the middle and working class when you’re collecting millions from Jeb Bush supporters?” asks the insurgent contender.

The argument that Sanders makes is that Democrats must mount a fall campaign that addresses the concerns of the great mass of Americans who are on the downside of the economic-inequality divide. “We are in this campaign to win, but if we do not win, we intend to win every delegate that we can so that when we go to Philadelphia in July, we are going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen,” says Sanders, who wants to see that agenda spelled out in a platform that calls for “a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions…”

The reason that the Democratic Party loses elections is that they have lost sight of their roots. It’s just like a sporting contest; if you’re struggling, you’ve got to get back to the basics. We need to go back to the basics of the New Deal and unite around its principles.

That doesn’t mean that we return to the Southern Democratic model, which upheld Jim Crow as a way of life. The New Deal had its dark side, and that was it. But what it does mean is that we have to create an alternative to the “conventional wisdom” that we have to have austerity to protect ourselves from the Big Bad Terrorists or a massive swarm of immigrants and to get rid of the deficit.

The problem with the Clinton model, created after the loss of 1984, was that it watered down the New Deal in an effort to maintain southern votes which were going to the GOP in increasing droves. The winning model, crafted by Obama, was based on building on the Civil Rights era and making Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and others a part of a winning coalition. The fact that a Black man became president will be an inspiration to millions of young Black men who will see him as a role model and who can think of something beyond themselves. And to be fair to the Clintons, Hillary will inspire millions of young women in a similar way if she closes the deal and beats Donald Trump.

And not all of the problems with the New Deal coalition can be laid at the feet of the Clintons. The 1968 Convention, which represented a clash between the Union Democrats and the 1960’s youth who were inspired by the Kennedys, showcased the moral bankruptcy of a muscular foreign policy that sacrificed good will in the name of fighting communism. We honor and respect those who served in that conflict; we should never attack our friends and neighbors. However, we should always oppose our government when it pursues policies which are morally bankrupt and unsustainable.

Instead of the unworkable Neoliberal policies that arose during the Cold War, we should return to Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policies:

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office determined to improve relations with the nations of Central and South America. Under his leadership the United States emphasized cooperation and trade rather than military force to maintain stability in the hemisphere. In his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated: “In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.”

Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, participated in the Montevideo Conference of December 1933, where he backed a declaration favored by most nations of the Western Hemisphere: “No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another”. In December Roosevelt stated, “The definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention.” In 1934 at Roosevelt’s direction the 1903 treaty with Cuba (based on the Platt Amendment) that gave the United States the right to intervene to preserve internal stability or independence was abrogated. Although domestic economic problems and World War II diverted attention from the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy represented an attempt to distance the United States from earlier interventionist policies, such as the Roosevelt Corollary and military interventions in the region during the 1910s and 1920s.

I would add a qualifier to this — we cannot have free trade agreements that do not protect workers and their jobs and that do not transition workers from displaced jobs. I accept that the TPP may be better than previous agreements; however, it does not go far enough. Instead, it pits working people against each other; it pits the farmer against the worker, who will be fired through no fault of their own. 

We lost sight of our roots when we intervened in Korea and Vietnam, and we lost sight of our roots in the 1980’s, following the Reagan years. And we lost sight of our roots during the dozens of times when we fomented regime change around the world against countries that we didn’t like. Bernie Sanders finally developed a credible alternative to the “conventional wisdom” created by Henry Kissinger, whom Hillary Clinton embraced publicly.

I submit that neither Bernie nor Hillary has gone far enough in returning to our roots. Contrary to popular belief, New Deal politics did not involve paying millions of able-bodied people not to work. We all know the type of person who feels they should not have to work and games the system so that they won’t have to. That is why Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queen” meme stuck. But Roosevelt’s social safety net was based on work, not welfare. Case in point — The Works Progress Administration:

While FDR believed in the elementary principles of justice and fairness, he also expressed disdain for doling out welfare to otherwise able workers. So, in return for monetary aid, WPA workers built highways, schools, hospitals, airports and playgrounds. They restored theaters–such as the Dock Street Theater in Charleston, S.C.–and built the ski lodge at Oregon’s Mt. Hood. The WPA also put actors, writers and other creative arts professionals back to work by sponsoring federally funded plays, art projects, such as murals on public buildings, and literary publications. FDR safeguarded private enterprise from competition with WPA projects by including a provision in the act that placed wage and price controls on federally funded products or services.

The Peace Corps and Americorps were attempts to build on this. After Vietnam, we have moved away from the concept of national service. We need to return to this concept. Rather than give people 3-5 years to find work and then kick them off welfare, we need to offer more opportunities like this for people who want to work, but who can’t find it. Given the reality of technological unemployment, we need to consider stuff formerly considered too radical such as Basic Income. Roosevelt did not stop there. He proposed an Economic Bill of Rights:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. That means that we have to unite, not behind Hillary right or wrong, but behind the economic principles that brought our country back from the brink following the Great Depression. That means that if Hillary does something right, we have to give her credit. If she does something wrong, we have to hold her accountable. We have to create a permanent revolution in which we force our politicians to listen to the people, rather than the corporations. There is no place for violence in this process because we lose our legitimacy; rather, it is a matter of participating in the process so that our voices are heard. Hillary can be pushed; however, if we don’t push her, her default position will be the neoliberal positions that her corporate donors are pushing.

This means that we have to insist on complete transparency in everything, which is why I am adamant that Hillary should release her transcripts (just like I think Trump should as well). What is she telling Goldman-Sachs that she is not telling us? I don’t object to her making a lot of money from that; I don’t object that she is doing it. I object that she is keeping her speeches secret, as though they were classified information. She is a public figure; if she doesn’t want us to know what she is telling them, she shouldn’t be running for office. Our Republican friends would be a lot more likely to get on board with some of our ideas and even pay more taxes if the process is completely open and transparent. 

We cannot demagogue our way to victory, even against the likes of Donald Trump. We can, however, win by finding common ground with people of all faiths and political persuasions if we can do so without sacrificing our principles. The preceding is a good example. We have to be able to unite the country, not divide it and break the logjam that has been part of our process. We can suggest alternatives to Trump’s plans that would accomplish the same goals. Don’t want illegal immigration? Let’s crack down on corporations who hire them; don’t attack our friends and neighbors who come here to live a better life. If the word gets out that there’s no work here because employers would get in trouble, people won’t come and others would leave. 

A Trump Victory Over Clinton Would Not Be a Repudiation of Progressive Values

The first numbers from Real Clear Politics are out on the Trump/Clinton race. While they show Hillary Clinton leading Trump, it is not a sure thing. Currently, Ms. Clinton has 224 electoral votes in the bag, while Mr. Trump has 143. That means that there are 168 electoral votes that are up for grabs. 

Hillary Clinton has made her bed with the corporate big shots such as Goldman Sachs and others, who donated millions to her campaign and who paid her $225,000 per speech. To her credit, she takes more from small donors (Open Secrets) than the average person, but her actions show she is trying to have it both ways. As Cenk Uygur notes, if she had told Goldman Sachs stuff they did not like to hear, they would not have invited her back over and over again. And the word would not have gotten out among the 1% circles that she was someone they could do business with.

While a Hillary victory over Donald Trump is likely, it is not a given. And her attempts to court Bush donors are not going to help her in that effort. In order for her to win, she has to earn our votes. While I will vote for her, other people might not. She has to do more than triangulate and equivocate. Her recent stance on the Public Option is a good example. It sounds good on the surface, until you realize that all it does is allow people who are 50 or 55 to buy into Medicare. That is a good next step, since there are a lot of insurers who jack up rates for them because they are an insurance risk. However, that alone will not solve the problem of millions who are still uninsured. I had a lady on Twitter whose reaction to Hillary’s plan reminded me of the girl in the country song who sang, “That don't impress me much!”

Most of the Democrats who lost in 2010 and 2014 were not Progressives, but corporate Democrats. There were a few exceptions such as Feingold and Udall, but most of them lost because of the continuing demographic shifts of voters shifting from Southern Democrats to Republicans. Therefore, a loss of Hillary in the upcoming election would not be a repudiation of Progressive values, but a repudiation of Democrats trying to have it both ways by trying to court both the working class and Wall Street.

Another case in point is West Virginia. Paul Farrell, a West Virginia attorney, sought to run for President on the presumption that West Virginia voters, many of whom had families who worked for coal for 180-300 years, would repudiate both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. He touted pro-coal, pro-gun credentials. However, West Virginia voted for Bernie, suggesting that Democrats in Coal Country are just as tired of corporate Democrats as the rest of the country. Farrell got around 7% of the vote even though people knew him, and I wonder how many of those confused him with the TV actor Will Ferrell, who has portrayed Presidents on late night TV before. It took me several tries on Google before I could pull up the West Virginia attorney.

One West Virginia exit poll showed that nearly half of Sanders voters would support Trump over Clinton. While the transition from coal to other forms of energy are inevitable with the signing of the Paris Accord, Hillary does not offer any kind of plan to transition coal workers from energy to other fields beyond vaguely mentioning clean energy. As a peon, I do not know how well skills learned in a coal mine translate to, say, solar and wind energy. Bernie did a better job of relating to these people; his trillion dollar infrastructure plan would create millions of jobs, his opposition to TPP would protect many more, and his $15 minimum wage means that companies would have to hire to meet demand, since people would have more disposable income. The November election is Hillary’s to win. But to do so, she has to relate to us, and she has to relate to workers who stand to lose jobs in the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Opinion: Hillary's Loose War Talk

By Sheldon Richman
Future of Freedom Foundation

When President Obama spoke before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee some weeks ago, he admonished those who engaged in “loose talk of war” about Iran. Apparently, his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, didn’t get the memo.

The Associated Press reported this week,

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear Saturday that time is running out for diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program and said talks aimed at preventing Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon would resume in mid-April. With speculation over a possible U.S. or Israel military attack adding urgency to the next round of discussions in Istanbul set for April 13, Clinton said Iran's “window of opportunity” for a peaceful resolution “will not remain open forever.”

She also expressed doubt about whether Iran has any intention of negotiating a solution that satisfies the U.S., Israel and other countries that believe Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

That’s another memo Clinton seems not to have received. Both American and Israeli intelligence say that Iran has neither started to build a nuclear weapon nor even decided to do so in the future. Both also regard the Iranian government as a “rational actor.” (The American news media occasionally reports this, but then goes back to stating, as though it were uncontroversial, that Iran is building a nuclear arsenal.)

So why the conflicting signals from the U.S. government? This conflict can be seen in Obama’s own statements. While he calls for diplomacy and warns against loose war talk, he has imposed harsh economic sanctions that make the daily lives of average Iranians miserable, has rejected “containment,” and boasted that he doesn’t “bluff.”

If Iran is not building a nuclear bomb, if it has not decided to do so, and if Obama wants to use diplomacy to discuss Iran’s uranium-enrichment program (which its government says is for peaceful purposes), why is he pushing sanctions designed to bring the Iranian economy down? Wouldn’t it make more sense, if there is really something to negotiate about, for Obama to treat the Iranian regime with respect?

The saber rattlers will say that sanctions are needed to get Iran to the negotiating table. But that’s an evasion. The official experts, as well as others, say no bomb is being built. Iran is doing what it is free to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — enriching uranium for medical and energy purposes. It is subjected to inspections and its uranium is under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

There is no constructive purpose to the sanctions and war talk. Clinton aggravates an already dangerous situation when she talks ominously about windows closing and clocks running. She sounds bent on war, with Obama just a bit less so.

Why?

Two reasons suggest themselves. It’s an election year. The Republican presidential candidate (unless it’s Ron Paul) can be expected to portray Obama as insufficiently bloodthirsty. Mitt Romney hopes we’ll ignore Obama’s expansion of the criminal drone war in Pakistan and Somalia, his due-process-free assassination of Americans in Yemen, his autocratic intervention in Libya, his continuation of the brutal occupation of Afghanistan, and his signing legislation to codify the president’s power to detain even American citizens indefinitely without charge or trial. Romney’s foreign-policy team are some of the same people who gave us the lie-based invasion of Iraq, which was responsible for the deaths of well over a million people and the creation of more than four million refugees. Word is that the presumptive candidate plans to hammer Obama on his handling of foreign affairs. According to the Washington Post, “In his speeches, Romney has proposed a more confrontational approach to China, Russia, Iran and other countries.”

The Obama campaign may have calculated that they can’t afford to look weak on Iran. Yet this is not the only reason. Israel’s top officials appear to have decided that an attack on Iran is imperative. But without U.S. help, Israel’s air force can do no more than set Iran’s (peaceful) nuclear program back for a brief time. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his threatening talk, supported by the Israel lobby in the United States. Israel-partisans in the U.S. media routinely channel Netanyahu’s war talk to the American public in order to build sympathy for the nonexistent Iranian threat to Israel.

Obama says he wants peace not war. When will he begin to act like it?

Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org).

Jack Remembers -- Letters

I wrote an article about a speed trap in my hometown, and asked if your town had a speed trap like the 12th Street trap in Oak Grove. I was inundated by responses from all over the state. One woman from Centralia wrote about a speed trap a half a mile south of Hallsville. A Lafayette county elected official told me about his daughter who commutes to Warrensburg college getting a ticket on two consecutive Monday mornings on Highway 13 by the Higginsville police. It seems as if the five mile stretch between the town of Higginsville and I-70 is in the city limits of Higginsville. However, everyone who responded said the same thing that was frightening to me, “Don’t use my name”. I guess they were afraid their local police would retaliate.
I also wrote an article about the four Marine Infantrymen who urinated on two dead Taliban soldiers that outraged both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Two veterans from two different wars responded.
John Madsen from Oak Grove, who I have known since high school days, and his wife Karen, are good Christians, and are active in the United Methodist Church. John, who was in the 185th Combat Engineers Battalion in Korea, said when he heard about the Marines on television, he thought it was just awful. But after reading my article, he thought maybe there wasn’t a lot of difference between that and the fact they had drilled a hole in the skull of a Korean to use as a candle holder to light their tent.
Jerry England, a Viet Nam Veteran from Mountain Grove who reads my articles on the internet, showed me an ear he had cut off a dead Viet Cong he had killed for a souvenir. He carried it in his pocket for a long time, but said he now has it laying on top of his dresser in his bedroom. Needless to say, Jerry is still single.

Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075, www.jackremembers.com, or jackremembers@aol.com

Veterans For Peace Demands Apology From Secretary of State

Just minutes after Secretary Clinton began

a speech lauding freedom of the internet, two security personnel

forcefully removed an audience member wearing a Veterans For Peace

t-shirt who had silently stood and turned his back to her. Ray

McGovern, a 71-year old veteran, and former CIA analyst was violently

grabbed and forcibly removed from the auditorium in direct view of

Mrs. Clinton. According to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney with the

Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “For this peaceful expression of

dissent, he ended up bruised, bloodied, arrested, and jailed.

Secretary Clinton never paused, continuing her speech lecturing other

countries about the need to allow freedom of expression and dissent,

while Mr. McGovern was hauled out in front of her.”

Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, and the metal handcuffs were

fastened so tightly that his wrists were cut and bloody. After being

held by local police, he was told that he was being charged with

“disorderly conduct.”

We asked Ray for a quick statement after his release. He wrote:

“I find myself wondering if this show of brutality may be a signpost

on a path to even wider and more brutal repression. I have been

comparing what happened during Clinton’s speech Tuesday with my

four-minute mini-debate with Donald Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006 in Atlanta

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MInHphR4zBg). Halfway through,

Rumsfeld gives the nod to a black-hatted security fellow to elbow me

away from the microphone.

I shout, ‘So this is America.’ Rumsfeld takes one look at the TV

cameras streaming live, makes a snap decision, and tells the security

fellow to let me stay. During that same speech in Atlanta, one

fearless witness stands dead-center in the audience with his back to

Rumsfeld for the entire speech and is not bothered, much less beaten

and jailed.

The contrast between the experience of May 2006 and February 2011 can

be viewed through the prism of the proverbial ‘boiling frog.’ There

does seem to be a subtle but successful campaign to get people

gradually accustomed to increasingly repressive measures; and many,

perhaps most, Americans seem oblivious.

After 9/11 Norman Mailer saw a ‘pre-fascist climate’ reigning in

America. If we don’t stand up for our rights, it may not be long

before we shall have to drop the ‘pre.’”

Veterans For Peace is proud of our member Ray McGovern, whose simple,

dignified action speaks volumes about the power of non-violence. We

abhor the actions of the security personnel who reacted violently and

in flagrant violation of Mr. McGovern’s First Amendment rights. We

also deplore the indifference of Secretary Clinton who didn’t bat an

eye and we demand that she apologize for her silence and hypocrisy.

Most importantly, we call on the American public to wake up to the

dark reality of what this country has become…a place where civil

liberties and freedom of expression are becoming increasingly

endangered, and the government’s response to every situation is

intimidation and force.

Call 202-647-4000 and write Sec. Clinton to protest:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1312/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5914

Setting in a Mousetrap, Pondering my Fate for April 23rd

John McCain will be the next president.
As much as I hate to say it, I think unless something drastic happens between Hillary and Barrack, that John McCain will be and deservedly so, be the next President of the United States after the November elections. Unless he makes a terrible mistake, I think Senator McCain had better go on down the local post office and get his change of address stickers to read, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Why?
The Democrats have gotten away from the issues, they are doing nothing but picking at each other. Was what Hillary said that big of a deal? We all know she is a control freak and we all know that if Senator Clinton believes it to be true, then it is true, don’t doubt it. What Obama said, about people looking for a comfort wasn’t a big deal, but they went after each other and that is not want we need. Hillary calling Senator Obama an elitist, Now is that the pot calling the kettle black or what? We already know the kettle is black. :) McCain however is talking issues and solutions and that is what I want to hear. I want to hear the issues, I want to hear the candidate has a plan and I am the type who even believes he will institute them. Today, 4/15/08 McCain said that what should be done in the face of rising fuel prices is that congress suspend the federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day. People are not going to stop and consider what consequences will come out of that, neither am I, but it sounds at this time like a good idea.
I started to have this feeling before the day’s announcement. It started as I know the strong feelings the followers of Senator Clinton have and the strong feelings of the followers of Senator Obama. I believe that if their candidate is not the one chosen many democrats will not cross over and vote for the other democrat, but will either cross over and vote for Senator McCain or simple stay home. If my predictions happens the democrats are split pretty much equally in two and then are sunk. Unity after the convention will do no good. I talk to more and more people who don’t like any of the candidates and I am wondering what the turn out will be like. From what I read on this day, the election pie is pretty much spliced three ways. No one can afford to lose to many votes, especially the democrats.
At this time my allegiance sets with Senator Obama. Why? I have talked about this before but here are my feelings racist as they are. I never thought a black man could get this far in the race for the office of President of the United States. The man must have some good qualities within himself. He is not where he is because he is black. He is where he is because he is a man of quality.
Although I feel Bill Clinton did this country a lot of good and would love to see it go back to where it was when he was president. I would make a similar comment about Bill and Monica as Abe Lincoln said about General Grant. I think it would have been better if he would have had a wife that supported him and not competed against him. What was she doing running around the world anyway? I will never forget her comment, "We are the president."
I will never vote for a Republican for anything. If you are a Republican you are a supporter of Chairman George Bush in my eyes. I am excited about Bush leaving office and I hope he takes his rubber stamp Sam Graves with him. If Obama is not nominated for president, I will vote only for the congressional candidate and vote for an independent presidential candidate as I have done twice before. One of them I don’t even remember who he was; that was in 1980.
So I say, "Congratulations Senator McCain." At least I can say that, even if it is not with a sincere heart.

Setting in a Mousetrap, Pondering my Fate for April 16th

Is it all about money isn’t it?
The news carried the reports of Senator Obama raising 40 million dollars recently to Senator Clinton’s 20 million. This, for some reason means the one with the most money will win the office. Is there a date, like the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November that the one with the most money will go to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Sounds more like a game show than an election. I wish it was all about the best candidate, I wish there was a clearly best candidate. I am reminded of what Nikita Khrushchev said about John F. Kennedy. "If that is the leader of America, I feel sorry for those people." Just for the fun of it what do the Russians think of our election? My friend in New Jersey thinks all of our candidates are fools. She does not want Hillary or Barrack, she thinks the presidency is not a place for a woman, or an African-American. Historically, since maybe FDR or HST. America has not really impressed the world with its leadership. If we did anything to impress the world, it is the power of our military behind the man in office. Now it seems this doesn’t impress them anymore; at least not since Korea. Not to Monday morning quarterback Harry Truman, he didn’t drop a bomb on North Korea because of fear of starting World War III. He knew that Joe Stalin wanted WWIII and the only thing that really turned a hot war into a cold war was Stalin’s death. My New Jersey friend told me her father was a real supporter of Stalin, she said she never understood it and never agreed her father, but she could not change his mind; some day soon I will write why the man felt as he did, I was really interested to learn. I bet Joe Stalin never had to raise money to remain in office.
What it all boils down to for me is, all this raising money for the presidency is like bidding on a woman. The one with the most cash wins. I really hate to see the one with the most money win. I don’t count their money, I listen to their message. I try to feel if I trust them or not.
Moving on. If you live in Iowa I feel sorry for you. The Des Moines Register, Monday, April 7,2008 reported the state has lost a lot of revenue because the price of gasoline and people driving less. Now they want to raise license and document fees to recover part of it. I always believed that when I made a little extra money in life, somebody knew it was there and took it from me. I think you know the feeling. This my friends is not fair. They feel in Iowa, "since your not going to spend it at the pump you can give it to us." Like they haven’t figured out we quit spending it at the pump because we don’t have it.
If I lived in Iowa the message should be sent to Des Moines. This is not our problem and you can’t just tax us more when you are short of money. That has always been government’s approach to collection of revenue. It stinks, it needs to stop. The message should be sent clearly, if this new measure is put into motion, all of those who supported it will be in the unemployment line: What they belong. Their reasoning is there is not enough money to fix the roads. If we aren’t going to drive on them, why fix them? This whole argument reminds me of the British Stamp Act of the 1770’s. If we need money we just tax you. Well as far as I am concerned, if I have to spend the money anyway I’d rather put it in the gas tank. If the state of Iowa wants to do something for the common man, why not lower the gas tax a penny? But they don’t. What ties these two complaints together is the fact, they don’t. The giving is only one way. I was going to say like taking care of my cat, but my cat did give me a lot of affection.
It is all about money, he who has money has power. In the military system in the 18th and early 19th century and even during the American Civil War, you were not given an officer’s commission because of your ability to lead, it was because of your pocket book or political influence. If you don’t believe me, study up on a guy named Dan Sickles. He wasn’t the only one.
Please don’t let advertising tell you how to vote and in hard times, NO NEW TAXES. NO INCREASED TAXES.