The Cheney Observer
Halliburton, set to clean up, denies overcharges
By Brett Arends
Monday, September 19, 2005 - Updated: 11:34 AM EST
Politically-wired Halliburton Inc. is denying it overbilled the U.S government in Iraq – just three months after a Pentagon report showed $422 million in ``unsupported'' costs in the company's contracts.
The company, which is in line for Federal work helping rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, also responded to scrutiny of its CEO's growing fortune by taking the unusual step of highlighting the share option gains of an executive at a rival firm.
Halliburton has been a target of Bush administration critics over its work in Iraq. Vice-President Dick Cheney ran the company from 1995 to 2000.
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=103196
Iraqis to Bush -- Where Did All Our Money Go?
by Evelyn J. Pringle
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
September 18, 2005
I have come to the conclusion that even if I live to be 100, I will never be able to track down every Bush-connected profiteer involved in this phony war on terror scheme. According to a report released in March 2005 by Transparency International (TI), an international organization that focuses on matters of corruption, Iraq could become "the biggest corruption scandal in history."
"I can see all sorts of levels of corruption in Iraq," report contributor Reinoud Leenders stated, "starting from petty officials asking for bribes to process a passport, way up to contractors delivering shoddy work and the kind of high-level corruption involving ministers and high officials handing out contracts to their friends and clients."
One of the top ten crooks has got to be Ahmed Chalabi. A former banker in Jordan, Chalabi was forced to flee the country in 1989 before he could be arrested for his involvement in a $200 million financial scam. He was later tried and found guilty in his absence, and sentenced to 22 years in prison for more than 30 charges of theft, embezzlement, misuse of depositor funds, and currency speculation.
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept05/Pringle0918.htm
The Incompetent Chimp To The Rescue: How Will Our President Screw Up This Time?
Brendan Nyhan
Book from Touchstone
Release date: 03 August, 2004
Bush made a hash of 9/11 by responding with the Iraq War, and now we sit, in a quagmire of his making. How will he screw up Katrina reconstruction? No doubt there'll be other things besides no-bid contracts with Halliburton, and suspending minimum wage rules for reconstruction firms. But what else? Expect something.
This administration hasn't touched anything yet that it hasn't managed to screw up. Frank Rich really nails W to a high mast here:
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged", his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the end, something like Katrina tests a president's character, and Bush has come up close to zero in that department. You can't spin character: you either have it or you don't.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/18/170423.php
US peace activist deported as threat to ‘national security’
Dale Mills
Like a scene from a James Bond flick, 36-year-old Texan-based peace activist Scott Parkin was picked up on the streets of Melboune at lunchtime on September 11, while he was at a cafe. He was arrested by six immigration officials and Australian Federal Police (AFP), kept in detention and then flown out of the country on September 15.
Parkin was arrested as he was about to present a workshop about the US peace movement and how corporatations, such as Halliburton, profit from the war on Iraq. Parkin’s six-month tourist visa to Australia was cancelled with three months remaining, on the basis that his continuing presence in Australia was a “threat to national security”.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/643/643p10.htm
Cheney Wins -- Again
By MIKE ALLEN
As key Senators in both parties push President Bush to name a "hurricane czar" to take charge of the Katrina aftermath, some Administration officials relish the notion of outsourcing their Category 5 headache. But the idea of a superpowerful hurricane guy hit a major obstacle: Vice President Dick Cheney, who--eight days after Katrina made landfall--was put in charge of assessing whether the Administration was meeting its goals in the relief effort.
G.O.P. officials say Cheney opposed a czar largely out of his affection for standard operating procedure. But a presidential adviser tells TIME that Cheney was also concerned that the new office would invite more meddling by Congress and create another power center. "If you appoint a czar and he doesn't get what he wants, like if you start to tamp down the spending, all he has to do is go to the press and create sympathy for his viewpoint and make it difficult for the President," the adviser says. Bush and his inner circle agreed, with little debate, top aides said.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1106315,00.html
Congress must see records of Cheney's secret meetings
Shortly after the Bush administration took office, Vice President Dick Cheney held secret meetings with the chief officers of the major energy companies. Even when members of Congress asked for the records of what went on in those meetings, Cheney refused to turn over his records.
In the past four years, even before Hurricane Katrina, gasoline, crude oil, natural gas and electricity all saw dramatic price increases. There have been several big mergers in the oil industry, which means less competition.
Now, they say because of the hurricane, of course, prices are going to go much higher. I think the members of Congress should be outraged and demand to see the records of those meetings. The American people have a right to know when they are being robbed. This administration is handing the country over to big business every day.
JOE KRISTON
Kimball Township, Sept. 12
Originally published September 18, 2005
http://www.thetimesherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/OPINION03/509180329/1014/OPINION
Letters from September 19
Monday, September 19, 2005
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In response to some of those who say that you cannot lay responsibility for the disastrous relief response to Hurricane Katrina on the president, that is simply not the case. Part of any executive's job is selecting the right team to help him or her lead. We expect it of Gov. Bredesen just as we expect it of any good business leader. A major part of Bush's 2000 campaign revolved around his ability to make Americans safe and secure. That included a government restructuring that moved FEMA under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. Ostensibly FEMA could now respond to any type of disaster. Many citizens over the course of the 2000 campaign remarked that Bush and Cheney made them feel safer.
And yet, look who the president chose to lead the agency responsible for handling the aftermath of disasters on American soil. The top three leaders of FEMA had ties to Bush's campaign or the White House advance operation. A former GOP lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a one-time political operative fill another two senior operational spots.
The president chose political patronage over more responsible selections. These individuals' resumes included a media strategist, lobbyist, campaign advance deputy-director, and commissioner of a horse-sporting group - not exactly what one would consider typical training for emergency management. It was possible that no natural or manmade disasters of this scope would have occurred, and the president's patronage appointees would never have been known outside the Beltway. Yet in this case it cost lives, plain and simple. So was Bush partly responsible for the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina? Absolutely. Poor personnel management is a sign of poor leadership, especially when it is a matter of life and death.
Mark Kelly
Kingsport
http://www.timesnews.net/article.dna?_StoryID=3547872
Luminaries flock to jailed reporter
By Carol D. Leonnig
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Locked in the Alexandria, Va., Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.
But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002502806_millervisit18.html
John Roberts: career-long criminal player and imperial bagman
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
September 18, 2005—In yet another typically stomach-turning Washington charade, the smug John Roberts non-answered his way through his Senate confirmation hearings, sailing towards a virtually certain approval as America's 17th chief justice.
Another deep political player who should be grilled, excoriated, and punished, for a lifetime of criminal and treasonous activity, was warmly welcomed by a panel of hapless and equally corrupt politicians, and then permitted to perjure, lie and play-act to a position on the highest court of the land.
It is no surprise that the ascension of Roberts has been such an urgent priority for this administration. It is not just because Roberts facially resembles Bush, and echoes Bush's oily and arrogant smugness. The darkness at the core of Roberts is amply documented in Nat Parry's John Roberts and the apex of presidential power.
Parry points out:
"While much of the focus on Bush's choice of Judge Roberts has centered on his life-long conservative ideology, including his hostility towards women's rights, a sleeper issue has been Roberts's support for giving the Executive nearly unlimited authority, at least when the White House is held by a Republican.
"Roberts's deference to presidential power is a strand that has run through his entire career as special assistant to Ronald Reagan's attorney general, a legal strategist for Reagan's White House counsel, a top deputy to George H.W. Bush's solicitor general Kenneth W. Starr, and a federal appeals court judge accepting George W. Bush's right to deny due-process rights to anyone deemed an 'enemy combatant.'"
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/091805Chin/091805chin.html
John Roberts, Stare Decisis, and the Return of Lochner: An Impetus to Jump-Start the Labor Movement
by Matthew Ford
There are some things we take for granted, some things that seem so natural we forget that they were the result of long, hard struggle: the forty-hour work week, weekends off, the abolition of child labor, worker safety laws, and the right to collective bargaining -- to name a few. But as John Roberts begins to settle into his seat as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and the next corporate crusader slides through a mock nomination hearing, labor activists and their progressive allies will have plenty of impetus to jump-start the labor movement.
Judges are not theoretical recluses hiding from society as they arrive at unavoidable conclusions by simply applying the rule of law to the facts at hand. We must send a clear signal to the Supreme Court, both before and after Roberts and the next new Justice are firmly seated on the bench, that certain precedents are here to stay.
Roberts on Precedent:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/ford180905.html
Frank Rich: "The Administration's Priority Of Image Over Substance Is Embedded Like A Cancer In The Katrina Relief Process"…
Message: I Care About the Black Folks
By FRANK RICH
ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/opinion/18rich.html?ex=1284696000&en=64a2f63f0c39dc70&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Funnyman Walker gets serious about New Orleans
Hearne Christopher
No big surprise that comedian Jimmie “J.J.” Walker took a shot at the prez during his recent gig at Stanford’s in Overland Park.
“Good news for George Bush,” Walker told the crowd. “He’s finally found his weapons of mass destruction — Hurricane Katrina.”
But not all Bush jokes are well-received, it seems (more on that later). In an interview off stage, Walker was dead serious on the subject of Bush and New Orleans.
“It’s a very tough situation,” Walker begins. “I think George Bush should come down there and live and stay with the people.”
On the other hand, New Orleans could provide Bush with an excuse to pull out of Iraq, Walker says.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/living/12645692.htm
Rove surfaces to clear path for Bush
Correspondents in Washington
September 19, 2005
"BUSH'S brain" was missing when floodwaters swamped New Orleans.
Karl Rove, the White House aide who goes by that unofficial title, was suffering from kidney stones and was admitted to hospital in the middle of the biggest crisis so far of President George W.Bush's second term.
Once his condition improved, it was Mr Rove who urged the President, against the advice of White House economists, to spend $US200billion ($260billion) to rebuild the stricken city "higher and better", as Mr Bush went on to promise. Though many Republicans are horrified by the cost, Mr Rove is determined to revive Mr Bush's dormant image as a compassionate conservative, the theme of his first presidential campaign in 2000, and will be overseeing the reconstruction effort.
Bill Kristol, editor of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, said Mr Rove's absence had made a significant difference after the hurricane hit.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16646620^2703,00.html
Phone call from Rove spurred dismissal
By Wayne Slater
The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN, Texas — White House Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove personally called the Texas secretary of state about a newspaper story quoting a staff lawyer about whether Rove was eligible to vote in the state.
The lawyer was subsequently fired.
Secretary of State Roger Williams said that he decided to dismiss the lawyer after talking with Rove but that the White House adviser didn't request that he do so.
"Absolutely not," said Williams, a longtime supporter of President Bush and a major GOP fund raiser.
"Karl called me. He had read the article and wanted to know if it was our stance" that his voter-registration status in Texas might be in jeopardy, he said. "I told him it wasn't and that the person who gave that opinion was not authorized to do so."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002502813_rovefire19.html
Bush nephew resisted arrest
Austin - A nephew of President George W Bush repeatedly pushed against an officer who was trying to handcuff him during his arrest on suspicion of public intoxication, according to an affidavit.
John Ellis Bush, 21, whose father is Florida governor Jeb Bush, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 02:30 (06:30 GMT) on Friday in Austin's Sixth Street bar district.
Bush had approached the state agents and Austin police officers to ask about an arrest earlier of people he knew. Officers said he appeared intoxicated and could have posed a danger to himself and others, said TABC Capt. David Ferrero.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Backpage/HotGossip/0,,2-1343-1344_1772515,00.html
Williams: Rove did not request lawyer's dismissal
9/17/2005 1:52 PM
By: Associated Press
AUSTIN -- Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams said he spoke with presidential adviser Karl Rove before deciding to fire a lawyer quoted in a newspaper story about Rove's eligibility to vote in Texas -- but Rove did not ask him to do so.
Williams said that Rove had read the article and wanted to know if it was the state's stance that his voter registration status in Texas might be in jeopardy.
Williams said that he told Rove it wasn't and that the person who gave that opinion wasn't authorized to do so.
http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/default.asp?ArID=145702
The whitewash thickens
The WMD Mirage: Iraq's Decade of Deception and America's False Premise for War, edited and with an introduction by Craig R Whitney Buy this book
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Reviewed by Piyush Mathur, with Eihab M Abdel-Rahman
As New York Times reporter Judith Miller cools her heels in prison for refusing to disclose her sources to special prosecutor Patrick J Fitzgerald (in a case ultimately related to America's erstwhile quest for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - WMDs), it is ironical to review The WMD Mirage, a volume edited and introduced by another Times journalist, Craig R Whitney, who is on precisely that quest.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI17Ak02.html
Houstonian stirs a ruckus in Australia
War protests get him 5 days in jail, a revoked visa and a bill for $8,000
By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
In Houston, Scott Parkin lived a mostly inconspicuous life as a part-time history teacher and peace activist.
ADVERTISEMENT
But in Australia, he has become a media sensation, a symbol of dissent and a topic of fervent Australian senate debate. When he was arrested this month after participating in a Sydney protest against the Houston-based company Halliburton, some Australians started describing him as the country's first "political prisoner."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3357623
Post-Katrina reconstruction
Just look who’s cleaning up
Molly Ivins
AUSTIN, Texas — Here’s a good idea: Consumer groups and progressive congressfolks have joined in an effort to stop thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina from being further harmed by the new Bankruptcy Act, scheduled to take effect Oct. 17.
This law was notoriously written of, by and for the consumer credit industry, and is particularly onerous for the poor.
The bill was passed with massive support from the Republican leadership in Congress and from a disgusting number of sellout Democrats. While it was being considered in committee earlier this year, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee offered an amendment to protect victims of natural disasters. It was defeated, without debate, on a party-line vote.
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/12667084.htm
FEMA: Dumping Ground for Bush-Cheney Shills by ATTYTOOD
Two Bush 2000 Florida recount aides were rewarded with top FEMA posts.
Reversing an eight-year crusade to rid the now-embattled Federal Emegency Management Agency of political patronage, a newly elected George W. Bush in 2001 named two key players in his Florida recount fight to important FEMA posts.
Neither man, Jacksonville attorney Reynold Hoover (pictured at right) and Miami lawyer Mark Wallace, had any experience in emergency management before they were named by the Bush administration to FEMA, now under fire for its botched response to Hurricane Katrina.
Hoover, a longtime "explosives expert" with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who became a lawyer in 1996, is still with FEMA as its director of national security coordination. Wallace left the Bush administration in 2004 to become deputy manager of the president's re-election campaign, and is now a lobbyist.
They are two more names to add to the list of political appointees and out-and-out hacks at FEMA.
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=2765
Cheney Revives Parvus 'Permanent War' Madness
by Jeffrey Steinberg, Allen Douglas, and Rachel Douglas
It was never a secret that the ranks of today's Washington neo-conservative war-party are filled with former first and second generation Trotskyists—personified by Irving Kristol, the former Shachtmanite Trotskyist, self-described "Godfather" of the entire neo-con apparatus, and the father of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. What was ignored was that fact that both they and Vice President Dick Cheney's are still fanatically committed to former Bolshevik minister of war Leon Trotsky's doctrine of "permanent revolution," and to the kind of permanent war which Cheney has created in Iraq, and is preparing to launch, very soon, as nuclear-armed warfare against Iran, and similarly permanent warfare against Syria, in South American, and elsewhere as soon, and as often as possible. It is this doctrine, which most historians associate with the name of Josef Stalin rival Leon Trotsky and his followers, which is presently the most immediate threat of mass-murderous violence to the world as a whole.
It is also the leading active threat to the continued existence of the U.S.A. as a constitutional republic, here, at home.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3237cheney_parvus.html
BUSH HAS NO INSIGHT. WHAT DOES ANYONE EXPECT?
Newsview: Crisis Overtakes Bush's Agenda
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
September 19, 2005, 12:11 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- Hurricane Katrina swamped President Bush's second-term domestic agenda, reordering his priorities and changing the political landscape.
His open-ended commitment to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast has become his No. 1 domestic imperative.
Swept away was Bush's pledge to cut the budget deficit in half. His centerpiece proposal to restructure Social Security -- in trouble even before the storm -- probably is a casualty, too.
http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-katrina-bush-agenda,0,7761278.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
Must Future Court Nominees Match Qualifications of Roberts?
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: September 18, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - Judge John G. Roberts Jr. has not done any favors for the next Supreme Court nominee.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for its vote on Thursday on Judge Roberts's nomination to be the nation's 17th chief justice, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: he will be a tough act to follow.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Despite Judge John G. Roberts Jr.'s reticence in answering questions posed by members of the Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats agreed he made a good impression.
A regularly updated guide to the nomination and confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts.
With President Bush trying to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy, both sides are already insisting that the next nominee must meet Judge Roberts's standard, each to further its own political goals.
After months of arguing that Judge Roberts should not disclose his views on specific legal matters, Republicans say he revealed enough to push the benchmark for the next nominee firmly to the right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/politics/politicsspecial1/18roberts.html
EDITORIAL
The Senate and the real John Roberts
Published Sep 17, 2005 10:50 AM
There’s a saying that if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it probably IS a duck.
John Roberts, George Bush’s nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, has argued right-wing causes on just about every significant social and econo mic issue in this country over the last two decades. He has written right-wing, reactionary legal position papers and argued right-wing, reactionary legal cases for right-wing, reactionary administrations. He has made right-wing, reactionary decisions as a federal judge. A quick check of the websites of the women’s movement, the civil rights movement and the labor movement will show his uninterrupted record of reaction.
The chances are—he is a right-wing reactionary!
http://www.workers.org/2005/editorials/roberts-0922/
The Unconstitutional FEMA
by Sheila Samples
September 16, 2005
It's a good thing President George Bush doesn't read newspapers or watch TV. If he did, even he could see that people from one end of this nation to the other are rapidly reaching zero tolerance with his bumbling ineptitude each time he is faced with a crisis. Those who watched in amazement as Bush sat paralyzed in a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, 2001 as planes were ramming into the World Trade Center and Pentagon – who watched in dismay as he zigzagged across the country from one hidey hole to another throughout the day – were not surprised that he dropped the ball when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29.
Bush has dropped every ball thrown to him throughout his life. But he's a hell of a cheerleader. It's almost like being back in college. In an instant, Bush can whip a crowd into a frenzy, armed with nothing but a bullhorn and a shell-shocked firefighter. He can divert the attention of an entire nation from what is happening on the field by locking it into one massive, cheering "wave." Life is a game. Go Team.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SAM20050916&articleId=962
While You Were Watching Katrina
House Republicans derail probes of Plame affair
by Murray Waas
September 16th, 2005 3:10 PM
Murray Waas will continue covering the Plame affair on his blog, http://www.whateveralready.blogspot.com/
Republicans on three separate congressional committees this week derailed three formal "resolutions of inquiry" by Democrats that would have required the Bush administration to turn over sensitive information and records relating to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Had the resolutions of inquiry been adopted, they would have led to the first independent congressional inquiries of the Plame affair, and perhaps even the public testimony of senior Bush administration aides such as Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, about their personal roles.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,waas,67952,2.html
Halliburton is in Katrina's trough
Published on Friday, September 16, 2005, in the Tracy Press.
AUSTIN, Texas — It’s an ill wind that blows no one good, so we should not be surprised to learn the first winner out of the gate on Hurricane Katrina is none other than the Halliburton Co., whose deserving subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root has already been granted a $29.8 million contract for cleanup work in the wake of Katrina.
Of course, no one would suggest Halliburton and its subsidiaries get government contracts (more than $9 billion for reconstruction work in Iraq, with Pentagon audits thus far showing $1.03 billion in “questioned” costs and $422 million in “unsupported costs”) just because Vice President Dick Cheney is still on the payroll. Heavens no. The veep continues to receive deferred pay from the company he formerly headed — $194,852 last year.
But Cheney has nothing to do with the Halliburton contracts — that, friends, goes through none other than the noted lobbyist and former head of — of all things — the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Since Joe Allbaugh, who was President Bush’s campaign manger in 2000, left FEMA in December 2002, he has been busy making sure reconstruction contracts in Iraq go to companies that give generously to the Republican Party.
http://www.tracypress.com/voice/2005-09-16-ivins.php
The secret country
September 17, 2005
Scott Parkin: 'secret' reasons for deportation.
Photo: Ringo H.W. Chiu
Why was this man detained on 'national security' grounds and deported? The trouble is, we don't know, writes Ian Munro.
ROB Stary admits he got it wrong. Late last year the president of the Criminal Defence Lawyers Association warned that the Federal Government's new national security laws had the potential to stifle political debate. But he never imagined it would happen so quickly.
Stary believed the new laws, covering terrorism, national security and ASIO, were aimed clearly at Islamic fundamentalists. While the legislation could technically be used to quell political dissent more broadly, he reasoned it was "inconceivable" that this would happen.
This week, after the detention and deportation of US peace activist Scott Parkin, Stary says he underestimated the Government. "Unfortunately, I was wrong, and it seems Parkin is the first example of someone who is a political dissident who suffered the consequences of dissent after being targeted by the intelligence community," Stary says.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/the-secret-country/2005/09/16/1126750129508.html
Andy Stern: Rebuild the Value of Work With New Orleans
Andy Stern Fri Sep 16,11:19 AM ET
President Bush last night, reeling from sagging polls, a sagging U.S. economy, and a sagging war effort, laid out his plan for the region.
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I love government programs, and entrepreneurship, but in the long run it can't beat a good job that allows you to own a home, raise a family, and gain the dignity and self-respect from hard work.
What the President did not mention was that he has suspended the one government program that could have assisted that -- Davis-Bacon, which provides for a prevailing wage, which by the way, is less than $10 an hour in New Orleans.
He did not suspend Halliburton profits or land speculation, just made sure that people who work start out in the whole when it comes to making the reconstruction jobs, jobs you can actually afford on you own to purchase a home.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20050916/cm_huffpost/007448;_ylt=A86.I12h.ypDKvgAmgD9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Letters to the editor: Watch administration's wake
September 16, 2005
In the midst of the tragedy Hurricane Katrina brought to this nation, only a man like President Bush could find a silver lining ... literally.
The first step was to persuade people to agree that the workers hired to rebuild the devastated area should be paid less than scale. Then he granted three no-bid contracts to his friends. A division of Halliburton got one, the company of a former Bush campaign manager got another, and the third went to someone who gave "generously" to the Bush reelection campaign. CNN further reported that Bush has relaxed restrictions on imports of building supplies.
At first it would appear that these steps might save the American taxpayer some money in the long run. However, as this administration has proven over and over again, the friends of the president will become richer and the American taxpayer will get poorer. American workers will be paid less, and American suppliers will be slighted.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-85529sy0sep16,0,96503.story?coll=dp-opinion-editorials
NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi blasts Bush administration's use of no-bid contracts for Katrina work
September 16, 2005
ALBANY, N.Y. September 16, 2005 - New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi today joined other labor leaders across the country in criticizing President Bush's decision to award no-bid contracts and suspend Davis-Bacon Act protections for reconstruction projects in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Iannuzzi said the Gulf Coast region already has the lowest prevailing wages in the country, and the suspension of Davis-Bacon Act protections means that workers involved in the cleanup and reconstruction of the region will find their wages driven even lower.
"It's outrageous that no-bid contracts to rebuild New Orleans are going to corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel," Iannuzzi said. "And it's beyond outrageous that Davis-Bacon Act protections have been suspended. Working men and women who have already lost everything are now going to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast for less than $10 an hour. It's pretty clear the Bush administration doesn't have its priorities straight."
http://www.nysut.org/media/releases/20050916hurricane.html
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