VOTE Action Committee

VOTE Action Committee

NEWS

People and Communities against the avarice of corporations
and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state.

NEWS

Ukiah Office:
1330 Boonville Road
Ukiah, CA 95482
707-467-0329

Marin Office:
270 Beach Road
Belvedere, CA 94920
415-435-2007

VOTE Action Committee's mission is to educate the public regarding
the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands.

For more than a decade, VOTE Action Committee has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state.

June 7th, 2009

Obama: Complicit in Torture, Complicit in Fraud

Dan Hamburg & Lewis Seiler/Common Dreams

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

Thomas Jefferson, 1802
[Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin]

Little has changed since Barack Obama assumed the presidency. The imperial agenda of the United States proceeds unabated with record military spending, expanded wars and prolonged occupations. Backtracking on wiretapping, rendition, and rights to due process, the new administration mirrors the old in its assertion of “state secrets.” Enabled by Obama’s picks of lifetime financial deregulators Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, the banks continue to dominate Washington.

As Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin described recently on a Chicago radio station, “Frankly, the banks run this place.”

Then there is the Bush administration’s legacy of torture, a problem that won’t go away quietly despite Obama’s determination to “look ahead.” Unfortunately for him, the president doesn’t have the right to choose which laws he will enforce, which international treaties he will honor. (Remember how we balked at George W. Bush’s imperious signing statements?) According to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, Obama is placing himself in legal jeopardy by refusing to meet the solemn obligations of the United States of America with respect to the crime of torture. This would be on top of the extreme political jeopardy Obama may encounter now that he has reversed virtually every position with regard the war on terror (other than his pledge to intensify the Afghan war) he advanced during his campaign. Most recently, the president has broken his promise of transparency by refusing to honor a court-ordered release of photographs that could put the lie to the assertion that the torturers were “a few bad apples.”

According to Major General Antonio Taguba, “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.” They are proof of a systematic policy of torture that, according to no less an authority than Dick Cheney, were approved in the Oval Office.

Barack Obama took millions in campaign contribution from Wall Street and the big banks, more than any candidate for office in the history of American politics. He bought the pre-meltdown line that the raft of exotic financial instruments spawned by the Street were evidence of the energy and creativity of the US economy, rather than signs of its corruption. When the crash came, Obama smartly saluted the Bush/Paulson plan to advance an initial $700 billion advance to the scofflaws, a bailout without requirements or controls. The president hasn’t wavered since in his belief that Humpty Dumpty can and must be put back together again.

Under Bush and Obama, 13 trillion dollars have been spent, lent or guaranteed to save the country’s largest (albeit insolvent) banks. But when it came to mustering 51 Senate Democrats to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by the very banks that have been devouring his government’s bailout feast, Obama was mute. Senator Durbin again captured the moment: “The banks that are too big to fail are saying that 8 million Americans facing foreclosure are too little to count.”

At his 100 Days press conference, the president called the ethical meltdown that led Americans to torture a “mistake”. Hauled before Congress to explain the financial meltdown that gathered steam on his watch, Alan Greenspan explained his “mistake” of “presuming that the self-interests of…banks…were such that they were best capable of protecting their shareholders.” In a similar vein, we’ve heard repeatedly that the Iraq war—with no WMD’s found and no post-shock and awe plan—was another “mistake.”

How come these brilliant, highly educated and compensated people keep making supersized “mistakes?” Perhaps because they aren’t mistakes at all.

What the United States needs more than anything is some full-bore truth-telling before we slip into a fascistic, Orwellian dystopia. We could start by admitting that we preyed upon Iraq not because that country was perceived as a threat but because, after 10 years of sanctions, Iraq was no threat at all. In fact, it was ripe for the picking. Once consumer protection was removed, the banks could freely practice their own brand of predation. Millions of Americans, hoodwinked into signing up for “no-doc” loans with teaser rates, were also ripe for the picking.

Was the financial meltdown a mistake? According to University of Texas Professor James K. Galbraith, “You had fraud in the origination of the mortgages, fraud in the underwriting, fraud in the ratings agencies.” Committing fraud is not the same as making a mistake. Fraud, according to our dictionary (American Heritage, 2nd ed.), is “deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.” Fraud is not a mistake.

In 2004, the FBI warned that “rampant fraud in the mortgage industry… could become an ‘epidemic.’” The Bureau was ignored. (Interestingly, the Bureau was also ignored when it tried to sound the alarm that young Saudis with dubious visas had enrolled in US flight training schools.) Top economists including Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman were also ignored because in fact, there was no mistake being made in this, the largest transfer of wealth from the lowly taxpayers to the lofty oligarchs in the history of the world. As in their preemptory attack on oil-rich and strategically-located Iraq, the elites were simply pursuing their private, or corporate, interests, indistinguishable in their minds from the public interest.

The American people are now suffering from all these “mistakes” and there are plenty of signs that things will not improve soon. Last month, we learned that just over half a million people lost their jobs. That was considered good news. Experts predict at least eight million foreclosures in 2009. That translates into about 30 million people without homes. Already tent cities have sprung up in cities and towns around the country. Democrats in Congress are now proposing to construct “emergency centers” on abandoned military installations across the country under the supervision of FEMA. That’s FEMA as in “Heckuva job, Brownie!” While trillions go to the banks, the only housing to be afforded foreclosed-upon Americans will be the barracks of a detention camp.

We are still waiting to find out what “change” this new president plans to bring. So far, it looks like we the people have done little more than substitute a tarnished Bush brand for a shiny Obama brand. The military-industrial death machine rolls on, the taxpayers keep taking a beating, and our constitutional rights still hang in the balance. The powerful few are stealing our wealth, stealing our future, and stealing our birthright of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in a democratic society.

Make no mistake, we the people are being taken for a very expensive ride, an unpleasant ride that our children and grandchildren will be forced to take as well. The elites that own the wealth, fund the politicians and control the message are on the verge of stealing our birthright of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in a democratic society.

February 20, 2009
Will Obama Restore Constitutional Government?
While most of us have had our attention fixed on the economic firestorm engulfing the planet, President Obama is failing to meet his only sworn responsibility as our chief executive—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
... more

January 17, 2009
We Need a Hero
In the Disney animation The Tale of Despereaux the hero is banished from Mouseworld because of his refusal to cower.
... more

October 17, 2008
Martial Law Once Unthinkable Now Threatened
Martial law may be on the way.
... more

June 25, 2008
State of Emergency
Charlie Black, senior advisor to John McCain, caused a fluff by saying that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil would be a “big advantage” to his candidate.
... more

April 22, 2008
Is an Attack on Iran Imminent?
George W. Bush is poised to order a massive aerial bombardment—possibly including tactical nuclear weapons—of up to 10,000 targets in Iran.
... more

April 22, 2008
Iran: Bush Prepares to Double Down
Patrick J. Buchanan writes that “the United States…has reasons to want a short, sharp war with Iran.” He suggests that the chance to “effect nuclear castration” on Iran while “rally[ing] the GOP and driv[ing] a wedge between Obama and Hillary” may be too tempting for Bush and Cheney to resist. But will it work?
... more

February 4, 2008
Rule by Fear or Rule by Law?
Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the US government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and non-citizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of “an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.”
... more

April 30, 2007
Why there was no exit plan
For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.
... more

December 30, 2005
Cancer Epidemic Caused by U.S. WMD
growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan has become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome.
... more

December 30, 2005
How Bedrock Promises Of Security Have Fractured Across America
For more than two decades, Lowell Seibert made a living driving piles and erecting machinery across the industrial Midwest.
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December 30, 2005
George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon
On Friday, December 16, the New York Times published a major scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau: They reported that Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on Americans without warrants, ignoring the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
... more

December 8, 2005
The Venezuelan Election
The Venezuelan congressional elections of December 4, 2005 mark a turning point in domestic politics and US-Venezuelan relations.
... more

December 8, 2005
The Budget Deficit and Class Politics
Tax bills now wending their way through the House and Senate would cut about $60 billion in taxes next year. But there’s a huge difference between the two.
... more

December 8, 2005
Art, Truth and Politics
Harold Pinter gave the following speech accepting the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature.
... more

December 8, 2005
Beyond the Multiplex
The most important political documentary of the decade suggests that the "war on terrorism" is a dark delusion -- and there's no such thing as al-Qaida.
... more

December 8, 2005
Condi's Trail of Lies
Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the US and torture have taken America's moral standing - and her own - to new depths.
... more

December 8, 2005
The Lost John Lennon Interview
John Lennon recounts about how he and George Harrison bucked their handlers and went on record against the Vietnam War, discusses class politic, defends country and western music and the blues, suggests Dylan's best songs stem from revolutionary Irish and Scottish ballads and dissects his three versions of "Revolution". The interview originally ran in The Red Mole, a Trotskyist sheet put out by the British arm of the Fourth International.
... more

December 7, 2005
Republicans have lost high moral ground
Call it Tonto's revenge: The outrageous rip-off of Native American tribes by a top Republican lobbyist is leading inexorably to a reckoning for the allegedly morally superior religious and political right.
... more

December 7, 2005
U.S. coming around to the truth
Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened Labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious Rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States.
... more

December 6, 2005
Giving up on New Orleans
We may as well abandon the Big Easy because the White House is killing a plan to protect the city from the next Katrina.
... more

December 6, 2005
How Greenspan Skewered America
No one has done more to ensure the ultimate demise of the American middle class than Alan Greenspan.
... more

December 6, 2005
Rendition Unto Caesar
Secretary of State Condi Rice is off to Europe to neither confirm nor to deny that the US government in an operation known as rendition kidnaps people, often the wrong ones, and flies them to foreign countries to be tortured.
... more

December 6, 2005
Fat Ass America
In a world of extreme depredation and looming ecological collapse, it is obscene that nearly two thirds of Americans are obese.
... more

December 5, 2005
Up in the air
In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year.
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November 18, 2005
George W. Bush gives me hope
Here's the good news: It really can't get much worse.
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November 14, 2005
Indefinite Detentions and the End of Habeas Corpus
Perfidy loves company. George W. Bush instructed his British puppet, Prime Minister Tony Blair, to get moving on the detention issue so that he, Bush, would have company when he attacked the Constitution's guarantee of habeas corpus.
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November 14, 2005
Graham Amendment Invokes Constitutional Crisis
In blatant defiance of the Constitution's guarantees of Habeas Corpus and separation of powers, the Senate on Thursday approved the Graham Amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 49 to 42.
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November 14, 2005
Germ Boys and Yes Men
In early November, George W. Bush, struggling to claw his way upward in polls that had acquired the consistency of quicksand after two months of blunders and disasters, launched a new PR blitz.
... more

November 13, 2005
'We Do Not Torture' and Other Funny Stories
If it weren't tragic it would be a New Yorker cartoon. The president of the United States, in the final stop of his forlorn Latin America tour last week, told the world, "We do not torture."
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November 9, 2005
The won't-be-bullied pulpit
I can't tell you how surprised and shocked I was — and how disappointed — when All Saints Church was informed that the sermon I preached on Oct. 31, 2004, might have constituted an impermissible intervention into a political campaign under the Internal Revenue Code.
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