First Door on the Left

I have been saying for years that George W. Bush has no business being where he is. He simply does not have the intelligence nor the leadership skills required of the highest office in the land. (Just for the record, I said the same back when he was the governor of Texas.) The author of this piece in the Washington Post appears to agree…

Management Style Shows Weaknesses

President Bush has long prided himself for focusing on big goals rather than niggling details and delegating significant responsibility to his aides. But his belated attention to the brutality at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison has revealed vulnerabilities in a management style that had brought him personal and political success.

(snip)

Outsiders, including some Republicans who speak forlornly about the debacle, said the Abu Ghraib scandal is the price Bush is paying for lacking curiosity and showing unwillingness to delve into potential roadblocks to his larger mission.

Paul C. Light, an authority on bureaucracy who is a political scientist at New York University, said Bush “should have been sharp enough to see the potential damage to the U.S. reputation, if not his own.” But Light said that with Bush’s approach to governing, an international group’s concerns about detainees would have been viewed as “nothing but a rounding error” in the greater goal of fighting global terrorism.

“This administration has been blinded by its hubris,” Light said. “The way this group of people operates is to have this kind of echo chamber in which they hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see. . . . They have no formal or informal method for challenging themselves, and that is a perfect recipe for this kind of result.”

It is so nice to have my views vindicated!

The Bushies are bound and determined to take away your overtime, and it looks like they’re going to get away with it. If you currently earn overtime pay, you’re paycheck is probably going to get a lot smaller come August. You need to call your Congresscritter now.

If you’re a worker who counts on overtime to make ends meet, the White House and Congressional Republicans have some news for you. Your boss may still make you work overtime hours, but don’t count on getting overtime wages. [link]

Paul Krugman’s column today is a must read.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush’s calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I’m not engaging in class warfare. They are. [link]

And if you really want to annoy your conservative friends, read Paul Wasserman’s column “Those who hate “liberals” really hate a free America.”

Finally, I am still unemployed and my unemployment benefits expired last week. I hate to have to ask this, but if you can spare a buck or two to help keep me alive, there is a paybox at the bottom of the right column. Thanks!

Electronic voting­ not ready for prime time

by Howard Dean

In December 2000, five Supreme Court justices concluded that a recount in the state of Florida’s presidential election was unwarranted. This, despite the desire of the Florida Supreme Court to order a statewide recount in an election that was decided by only 537 votes. In the face of well-documented voting irregularities throughout the state, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision created enormous cynicism about whether the votes of every American would actually be counted. Although we cannot change what happened in Florida, we have a responsibility to our democracy to prevent a similar situation from happening again.

Some politicians believe a solution to this problem can be found in electronic voting. Recently, the federal government passed legislation encouraging the use of “touch screen” voting machines even though they fail to provide a verifiable record that can be used in a recount. Furthermore, this equipment cannot even verify as to whether a voter did indeed cast a ballot for their intended candidate. Unfortunately, this November, as many as 28% of Americans - 50 million people - will cast ballots using machines that could produce such unreliable and unverifiable results.

Only since 2000 have touch screen voting machines become widely used and yet they have already caused widespread controversy due to their unreliability. For instance, in Wake County, N.C. in 2002, 436 votes were lost as a result of bad software. Hinds County, Miss. had to re-run an election because the machines had so many problems that the will of the voters could not be determined. According to local election officials in Fairfax County, Va., a recent election resulted in one in 100 votes being lost. Many states, such as New Hampshire and most recently Maine, have banned paperless touch screen voting and many more are considering doing so.

Without any accountability or transparency, even if these machines work, we cannot check whether they are in fact working reliably. The American public should not tolerate the use of paperless e-voting machines until at least the 2006 election, allowing time to prevent ongoing errors and failures with the technology. One way or another, every voter should be able to check that an accurate paper record has been made of their vote before it is recorded.

Both Democrats and Republicans have a serious interest in fixing this potentially enormous blow to democracy. A bipartisan bill, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), is one of several paper trail bills in the House and Senate and it should be passed as soon as possible. A grassroots movement for verified voting, led by organizations like VerifiedVoting.org, is gaining momentum nationwide.

There is nothing partisan about the survival of our democracy or its legitimacy. We cannot and must not put the success of one party or another above the good of our entire country and all our people. To the governments of the fifty states, Republican or Democrat, I ask you to put paperless e-voting machines on the shelf until 2006 or until they are reliable and will allow recounts. In a democracy you always count the votes no matter who wins. To abandon that principle is to abandon America.

We’re being taken for a ride, folks. Rather, George W. Bush is being taken for a ride… on our dime.

Bush Campaigns Heavily on Air Force One

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, wringing maximum political mileage from a perk of office paid for by taxpayers.

While Democratic rival John Kerry digs into his campaign bank account to charter a plane to roam the country, Bush often travels at no cost to his campaign simply by declaring a trip “official” travel rather than “political.”

Even when the White House deems a trip as political, the cost to Bush’s campaign is minimal. In such instances, the campaign must only pay the government the equivalent of a comparable first-class fare for each political traveler on each leg, Federal Election Commission guidelines say.

Usually, that means paying a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for the president and a handful of aides. It’s a minuscule sum, compared to the $56,800-per-hour the Air Force estimates it costs to run Air Force One.

(snip)

Bush has logged more than 68,000 miles this year on Air Force One, all within the continental United States except for a quick run to Mexico in January. With rare exceptions, he confines his travels to the more than a dozen states he and Kerry are fighting hardest for, and to places where he is raising campaign money.

Of those states, Bush has made five trips to Pennsylvania, four each to Missouri, Florida and Ohio, and three to Wisconsin. He also has flown to 24 fund-raisers for himself and the Republican Party.

The White House labeled travel to fund-raisers “political.” Likewise, it deemed as “political” a thank-you mixer with big donors in Georgia, his first campaign rally in Orlando, Fla., and bus tours through Michigan, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin, meaning his campaign paid a share of the costs.

But of the more than $203 million Bush has raised for his re-election, less than 1 percent has gone to reimbursing the government for travel costs this year.

Just thought you ought to know what your tax dollars are being used for.

It’s amazing what you’ll find sometimes if you click on those little Google ads that some websites are sporting these days.

Republican boxer shorts. The logo on this pair reads: “W43 — Get Behind a Good Man!!”

Uh, thanks anyway, but I think I’ll pass. THAT desperate I am not!

(I’m not going to link to the site that is selling these. If you want the link, let me know & I’ll send it to you. The going price for these boxers is $15 or three for $40.)