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

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Ukiah, CA 95482
707-467-0329

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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 25th, 2008

State of Emergency

San Francisco Chronicle

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.

No one mentioned that eight years ago the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) called for “a new Pearl Harbor.” Such an event would move the American people to accept the neocon vision of militarized global domination. Then—presto!—9/11 happened right on schedule, lifting George W. Bush from the shadows of a disputed election to the heights of a “war presidency.”

McCain said he couldn’t understand why Black would say such a thing. Really? With the country primed to vote the Republicans, and particularly the neocons, out of office this November, a national security emergency is likely the best way to turn the tide. Conservative pundit Patrick Buchanan wrote of the beneficial effect an attack on Iran would have for McCain, who is trailing in the polls.

With master puppeteer Dick Cheney pulling his strings, George W. Bush has taken unprecedented powers since the events of 9/11. On that day, the president issued his “Declaration of Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks” under the authority of the National Emergencies Act. This declaration, which can be rescinded by joint resolution of Congress, has instead been extended six times. In 2007, the declaration was quietly strengthened with the issuance of National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) which gave the president the authority to do whatever he deems necessary in a vaguely defined “catastrophic emergency” including everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Not a single congressional hearing was held on NSPD-51; members of Congress are not even allowed to read it!

A deadly struggle is going on within the US government. On one side are the neocons, the true believers who led us into Iraq as the first step in ushering in their new American century. On the other is the Republican Party “old guard” led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The conflict between these factions broke into the open in October of last year when the sixteen US intelligence agencies issued a consensus National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). This NIE cut the legs out from under the administration’s argument that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. The NIE stated that the Iranians had stopped work on the project in 2003.

A few weeks earlier, just before Labor Day, a B-52 Stratofortress bomber carrying six cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads flew an unauthorized mission from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana. This was the first time in 40 years that nuclear weapons had been flown over US soil.

Anonymous high-level tips to the Military Times, the newspaper of the US Armed Forces, led to recovery of the warheads. After several inconclusive and unsatisfactory investigations of the incident, Pentagon chief Gates fired Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. Given the volumes of evidence that this unprecedented transfer of live nuclear weapons was not an accident, the question remains: who within the government has the authority to commandeer nuclear bombs?

On April 29, CIA veteran Roland V. Carnaby was shot dead by police officers after a high speed chase through the streets of Houston. Carnaby, who had been the CIA’s Chief of Station for the Southeast Region headquartered in Houston, was conducting security surveys of the Port of Houston as part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). According to highly placed sources in the FBI and CIA, Carnaby was alarmed to discover that the Department of Homeland Security is tolerating “gaping holes in port security.” Carnaby believed that “a domestic security incident” could occur at the port as early as July 4.

The Houston ship channel is widely acknowledged as one of the most deadly and dangerous sites for a terror attack in the United States. The twenty-five mile channel is the site of more explosive materials, toxic gases, and deadly petrochemicals than anywhere else in the country, and produces 49% of the oil products, including gasoline, used in the country. An attack there could create an environmental and economic catastrophe that could dwarf 9/11.

With just a half year left in what many believe has been the worst presidency in American history, frightening possibilities exist. As citizens of this country, we must do everything in our power to ensure that there is no expansion of the war, no “false flag” attack at the Port of Houston or anywhere else, and a peaceful and constitutional succession to a new administration.
Lewis Seiler is president of Voice of the Environment, Inc. Dan Hamburg, a former US representative, is executive director.

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.
... more

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.
... more

November 18, 2005
George W. Bush gives me hope
Here's the good news: It really can't get much worse.
... more

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.
... more

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.
... more

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."
... more

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.
... more

November 9, 2005
Are sea birds becoming too dumb to survive?
The global decline in seabird populations is of growing concern to ecologists, and now researchers have discovered a new cause - some may be becoming too stupid to survive.
... more

November 9, 2005
A miracle and a menace
Hu Jintao is visiting London as president of a China at its most powerful for 200 years. It now needs resources to keep its factories running, its people sated. Its leaders want the economy to more than triple by 2020. For some, it is the business opportunity of a lifetime, but for others, the geostrategic and environmental threat of the century. In a two-part series, the Guardian examines how China is changing our world .
... more

November 9, 2005
Are those mountains or Golden Arches?
Ansel Adams came to the White House in 1975 to deliver a print of a photograph from Yosemite National Park desired by President Ford and Betty Ford.
... more

November 9, 2005
Why is France Burning?
Saturday night was the 10th day of the spreading youth riots that have much of France in flames, the worst night since the first riot erupted in a suburban Paris ghetto of low-income housing, with 1295 vehicles -- from private cars to public buses -- burned Sunday night, a huge jump from the 897 set afire the previous evening.
... more

VOTE Action Committee