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MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS
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Letters To The Editor
Remember when President Bush encouraged Americans to own their own homes? What followed were financial institutions getting heavily involved in risky situations, deregulation abounded, and Americans could take ownership of a home on not much more than a signature.
The housing market collapsed and untold numbers of new homeowners had the rug jerked out from under them as foreclosures skyrocketed. Good call George.
Ron Lowe
Nevada City
Mr. War President
Imagine trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? That is what you and Karl Rove are tying to do with one of the most inept administrations in the history of the United States.
The memo you sent out to your cabinet and staff recently indicating talking points for promoting your legacy, as something honorable and constructive is laughable.
Didn't you realize the havoc you would cause by invading Iraq under false pretenses that it would kill and wound tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis? Didn't you understand by cutting taxes for the top 1% and spending almost a trillion dollars to carry out your war without adequate revenue would bankrupt the U. S. Treasury?
Didn't you fully comprehend that on your watch the financial institutions on Wall Street would run amok because of your implied support of deregulation? Didn't anyone on your economic staff ever think that the runaway real estate market would eventually collapse causing millions of foreclosures as a result of sub-prime loans?
Why didn't you try to persuade the commodity markets to stop their casino gambling, which caused the price of oil to skyrocket for years creating inflationary prices hurting every household in America? Why didn't you try to persuade Detroit to start building gas saving cars and therefore help reduce dependence on foreign oil?
The above named failures and lack of presidential leadership will be your true legacy. Get used to it. We had to and the entire world will soon learn the same when historians sift the truth from the fiction.
David A. Whelan
Forest Knolls
Shame On The Big Three
As the disgraced Detroit three automakers are asking Congress for tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, we should remember the last several billion that we gave the industry, and the outcome of it. In the 1990s, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles worked to make 80+ miles per gallon cars and allowed for communications amongst scientists between the big three auto makers to help speed that process along.
The Partnership was a huge success, with three 70+ miles per gallon prototypes. General Motors had the Precept, a 5-seat sedan with ample trunk space, with one version getting 108 miles per gallon equivalent running on hydrogen. Ford had the Prodigy getting 72 miles per gallon, and Daimler-Chrysler also had a 72-miles-per gallon vehicle. Taxpayers were proud that their billions were not wasted, and expected these vehicles on the market.
But none of the automakers put any of these vehicles into production, or anything similar. Instead, they chose gas-guzzling SUVs, the epitome of stupidity from a climate change and energy conservation perspective. Using slick ads to push their behemoth vehicles, the automakers are among the biggest culprits in the fast rise in greenhouse gas emissions in the Untied States.
What happened to the efficient vehicles? The failure to incorporate that technology was also a major cause of our economic collapse. With the rise in gas prices this past summer, the values of SUV's plummeted, and for many, their gas guzzlers are now worth less than the loan they have on them.
Why should we give a bailout now, when the automakers are the ones who put themselves into the crisis they are in through their own idiocy? Why don't they dust off these efficient vehicles and put them into production, something both our wallets and our planet could have used a decade ago?
They say those who forget history are bound to repeat it. After the foolish follies of the auto industries, in pushing gas-guzzlers on the American public (along with tax breaks that they manipulated through Congress), why should we bail them out?
What we need is the massive investment in mass transit and high-speed passenger rail: a much better way to travel with exponential fuel savings compared to the most efficient vehicles.
Chad Kister
Nelsonville, Ohio
Kister is the Author of Arctic Quest: Odyssey Through a Threatened Wilderness Area; Arctic Melting: How Climate Change is Destroying One of the World's Largest Wilderness Area and Against All Odds: The Struggle to Save The Ridges. He is also the producer of the 2006 film, Caribou People. www.safeclimateact.org; www.chadkister.com; ckister@chadkister.com; 740-707-4110; 740-753-3888
Punish The Bigwigs!
First Enron, Xerox, Tyco, etc., then Bear Stearns, Lehman, WaMu, Wachovia, AIG, etc., then the Big 3, now Bernie Madoff's 50 billion Ponzi scheme. When will the law truly punish corrupt bigwigs? Take their every dollar and possession, and give their whole families nothing but some clothes, Welfare and Section-8! And no gifts from friends either! Poverty: isn't this what their former workers and their families get? And by whose fault? Bastards...
J. Andrew Smith
Bloomfield, NJ
jasmith4@comcast.net
Thanks For The Coastal Post
I have occasionally forwarded articles from Coastal Post to various Yahoo! groups that I am in. (I am retired, and I chose to spend my time distributing information to progressives, and thus serving as part of the information underground against the fascist Regime in Washington.) I have a small Yahoo! group called American Conscience, to which I have posted your article by Paul Craig Roberts this evening.
I wish you success in staying in business. YOU ARE VITALLY IMPORTANT. It is clear that Zionist fascists are trying to silence you, using the same sorts of tactics, I think, that fascists everywhere use.
May God have mercy on us all.
Peace and best wishes,
Hajja Romi
Newspaper Under Attack
This editorial from The Coastal Post shows how some people in Marin County, California, are attempting to stifle alternative viewpoints by stealing newspapers and pressuring advertisers not to advertise in the paper. Knowing that silence is the most powerful form of propaganda, these anti-democratic fanatics are acting to silence discussion of crucial issues. They are part of the many forces that are tearing away at our Republic, with their total disregard for the principles, e.g., a free press, which underpin the Republic and are contributing to converting our nation from a Republic into a lawless empire with only one "value" --- might makes right. What these people are doing (sabotaging a newspaper and denying free speech) has no place in our country.
This newspaper is going to need ongoing help. You can help by subscribing and/or donating (I do both) to this excellent local newspaper, as other people have done from around the world. Such small newspapers are the lifeblood of a
Democracy.
Daniel Stone
Down With The Gangsters
Hooray for freedom of speech! The pro-Israeli apartheid gangsters couldn't intimidate the Coastal Post advertisers with their attacks on the right to a political conversation! Unable to win the debate, these adolescent whiners tried to eliminate a newspaper and LOST. Unfortunately, around this country, the intimidation continues, intimidating the conversation at campuses and media outlets everywhere. It must be challenged wherever it lurks. So much for the contention that some supporters of apartheid in the Middle East care as much about freedom of speech in this country as they do about their political arguments. Unfortunately, there is no conversation on the Middle East in our own Congress. Further, not enough people around here rose to protect the freedom of the press.
Charlie Morgan
Pt. Reyes Station
Mandatory Reinvestigation Into 911
The alarming inconsistencies concerning the events leading to the 9/11 commission report would eclipse those of the Warren Commission. The unprecedented interference from the Bush administration, which dramatically impaired the commission's findings and effectiveness, is an undisputable matter of record.
The Bush team had initially prevented this investigation, even over the objections of a congressional majority. Not until the irate relatives of the survivors forced congress to approve it, with the consistent backing of Senator Max Cleland, did it occur. For this the senator, who is a triple amputee Viet Vet with an honorable record, was rewarded with one the most vicious and deceptive character assassinations in memory, and was unseated by one more amiable to the administration's tactics.
Mr. Cleland later served on the commission but felt compelled to withdraw when he realized that the obstructions and restrictions placed on it by the administration rendered it ineffective.
Not surprisingly, many opinions concerning the Bush team's real motives for have evolved.
They range from concealment of the early warning signs to actual participation in the event.
Until there is a legitimate investigation that can proceed without such obstacles by a credible team with meaningful oversight, there will never be a valid explanation for the real events behind 9/11.
Robert Settgast
San Rafael
We All Want To Move On
But just this past Friday, a bipartisan Senate report named Secretary Rumsfeld and other top officials directly responsible for sanctioning torture. Rumors in DC are that Bush will pardon Rumsfeld and others for these abuses.1
After eight years of defiling America's reputation and renouncing our founding principles, the Bush administration wants to jet off into the sunset without answering to the American public.
We can't let that happen. You and I have an important role to play as our nation's conscience.
Write your local paper and denounce any possible planned pardons for crimes committed in the "war on terror". Here are some sample letters and talking points you can follow.
America's renewal depends on a recommitment to human rights. And that recommitment starts by investigating past abuses and holding officials accountable. It's called justice, and the rule of law. And it's something our nation once held in high regard.
America's renewal depends on justice.
Write your local paper. And remember to register to participate in our inauguration day of action and our 100 days events.
Your letter to the editor would support Senators that are starting to push for accountability. Senator Feingold just last week wrote President-elect Obama asking for a "detailed accounting of what happened over the last eight years" and that "we must fully understand the mistakes of the past in order to learn from them... and prevent them from recurring." 2
A record number of pardon seekers have flooded the White House. Some believe Bush may issue pre-emptive pardons that would abdicate anyone remotely connected to so-called "alternative interrogation techniques" (otherwise known as torture). Any such pardon would undermine any future efforts to seek and find justice for the past eight years of human rights abuses in the "war on terror".
Write your local paper and express your outrage over the possibility of impunity for crimes committed in the "war on terror".
One of our three main objectives during President-elect Obama's 100 days is to ensure an independent commission investigates abuses committed the U.S. government in its "war on terror". Pardoning key officials, or even worse, issuing a blanket pardon, would undermine this critical goal towards restoring our commitment to human rights.
We're all ready to move forward. But our best chance of restoring the America we believe in means starting off with justice and accountability.
Take a few minutes to write your local paper.
Thank you for all you do.
Larry Cox
Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
New York, NY
Republican Out Of Control In California
GOP tactics are putting the whole state at risk. A handful of Republican legislators are trying to force their flawed and suspect anti-tax doctrine on tens of millions of Californians causing a financial earthquake. Who are these unsavory culprits and obstructionists? State assembly and senate members Mike Villines, Dave Cogdill, Dave Cox, Roger Niello, Ted Gaines, Kevin Jeffries and Rick Keane are GOP leaders holding the state hostage.
Why doesn't fellow Republican and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger call the members of his party to task?
Maybe it is the apathetic Californian citizenry and their ho hum attitude that is adding fuel to this crisis. Will it take the loss of basic services to finally get the public off their easy chairs and say enough is enough to this GOP minority that is holding the state at bay?
Ron Lowe
Nevada City
Coincidence?
December 8 - Governor Rod Blagojevich announces the State of Illinois will cease doing business with Bank of America.
December 9 - Governor Rod Blagojevich, who has been reportedly under investigation by the federal government for three years, is indicted based on a recent wiretap.
If he is as dirty as he is being portrayed, why did it take three years to find something on him? Also...
When is the last time you saw a governor take a high profile stand for a small business and working people against a multinational bank?
The FBI sure shut that down quick.
What convenient timing they have.
A Little Insight...
The FBI has been wire tapping Blagojevich for years.
This means they knew in advance that he was organizing a campaign to throw a spotlight on:
a) big banks who choking their clients credit lines even after they received their free billions from the tax payers
b) employers who are booting employees without warning, severance, or making good unused vacation time as required by law
They could have dropped him at any point, but they waited until this campaign started to resonate nationally.
Crooks they can live with.
Crooks who also happen to speak effectively against big banks and employers, they have a lot of trouble with.
Brasscheck TV
Israel Has A Right To Defend Itself
How is it when Israel defends itself against an aggressor, the Hesbola who shoot (kasam rockets) into Israel at an unrelenting pace and no one says a thing.
Israel has the right to defend and to preserve its sovereignty. against anyone.
Look Back in History. There have been numerous Nations who have for century's tried to eliminate the Jewish Nation.
Lets start with Egypt and go forward to the present time. I can name 4 or 5 nations who have tried and failed.
The African American was enslaved. However no one ever set out to exterminate them.
It makes me real angry when month after month you publish articles about Israeli Aggression. They are a nation who is surrounded by Muslims who want them dead. Do you think you would lie down and not defend yourself. I think not.
I lived in Bolinas from 72' to 75' I loved my time there.
I feel shame about the articles I read about the Hate for the Jewish nation that comes out of your writers. They should be ashamed.
I'm not Jewish. However I would stand next to them and defend them as a people and a nation. I'd die trying.
They have as much a right to live and survive as any man. Walk a Mile in their shoes. It would take a few pair because were talking about thousands of years.
Jack Hespel
Santa Cruz, Ca
The Palestinians Own The American Press?
My friend J, a United Airlines Captain, claims Israel owns the western press. As a bet, I agreed to pay him $50 for each pro-Israeli article he clipped from western newspapers. That was five years ago; maybe he does not need the money and all his clippings are crumpled and moldering in his Jeppesen Navigation Bag.
Page three of yesterdays S.F. Chronicle is a good example of flagrant anti-Israeli journalism. The Gaza news (sic) was mostly provided via Palestinian Journalist Taghreed El-Khodary and Ibrahim Barzak. Taghreed El-Khodary's conspicuous Palestinian bias has made her an Al Jazeera regular.
Google Ibrahim Barzak and notice how nearly every hit links his name to "white washing terrorism," "distortion" and multifarious forms of pro-terrorist propaganda and anti-Israel screed. In both Chronicle articles pivotal and essential facts are presented as unsubstantiated, dubious Israeli apologetics.
"The continued strikes, which Israel said were in retaliation for sustained rocket fire . . . "
"Israel said some aid had been allowed in (to the Gaza strip) . . ."
"Israel said . . . that the tunnels were used for smuggling weapons, explosives . . . "
"Israel made a strong push to justify the attacks . . . "
Notice: the justification was dismissed as only a "push to justify."
El-Khodary reports that "Militants in Gaza again fired barrages or rockets and mortar rounds farther into Israel on Sunday."
On Sunday?
Neither El-Khodary nor Ibrahim Barzak nor the San Francisco Chronicle report that rockets and mortars having been striking Sderot, Israel daily for the past eight years.
There has never been a military objective in these dauntless strikes: their purpose is the indiscriminate maiming and killing of Israeli civilians.
A quarter of a million Israelis have lived 24/7 in the shadow of quotidian rocket attacks from Gaza since 2001.
In the past eight years, the western press could have reported 10,000 Hamas missile attacks on Israel had it been interested, unbiased or courageous.
A ceasefire or truce, as defined by Hamas and reluctantly accepted by Israel, was only a few rockets or mortars hitting Israel each day.
Strange that the western press laps up vilifying news from El-Khodary and Barzak and focuses our attention such salient points as "Israeli warplanes unleashed scores of bombs and missiles . . . War-weary Gazans who've lived through countless Israeli incursions, air attacks . . ." "Israel unleashed that deadliest-ever offensive . . . hospital morgues quickly overflowed . . . 25 unclaimed bodies . . . their faces disfigured beyond identification."
Were we visited by terrorism, would our press also blame the victims?
Imagine the hue and cry if even one missile, unapologetically launched from Canada or Mexico or Cuba, exploded within U.S. territory.
Now picture 10,000 missiles striking and nary a peep.
Jeffrey R Smith
U.S. Naval Aviator and Lieutenant Commander Retired
Math Teacher at Encinal High School A.U.S.D.
Change Pentagon Regulation
Sometimes I think there is a digressive unit within the Pentagon charged with dreaming up regulations designed to aggravate our military forces and veterans.
In March 2008 the Pentagon issued a change in regulations significantly narrowing the definition of combat disabilities. The Pentagon stated that disability benefits should be higher for military personnel wounded in combat versus those injured in non-combat situations.
Two recent cases point out the absurdity of the new regulation. Sergeant Lori Meshell suffered a shattered hip and back injuries while diving for cover during a mortar attack in Iraq. Since she was not hit by shrapnel, the Pentagon ruled her injuries were not combat-related and she was not entitled to about $1,200 per month in benefits. Corporal James Dixon experienced a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a dislocated hip, and hearing loss from roadside bomb and mine explosions in Iraq and his case was ruled non combat-related. (This information is based on an article in the Boston Globe of November 27, 2008.)
This regulation has to be changed to classify all injuries experienced by military personnel in war zones as combat-related.
I state the preceding comments as a former PO2 (E-5) and LT (O-3), U.S. Navy.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH
The New World (money) Order
Back in 1997, in the February, March and October editions of the Marin County Coastal Post, I penned a few columns on matters of California's then impending "Smog Check II" program and the ill-fated, California Electrical Services Restructuring issue. The Post maintains archives if anyone is interested to see where I started from on the subject of energy credits and the possibility of a one global monetary system.
Last October, Reuters and the Washington Post reported that President Bush met with European leaders to hammer out a plan for an "international financial governance structure for financial markets" and, "to create new rules for our global economy"--ostensibly out of fear of the impending U.S. debt defaults time bomb. According to a survey from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) there is a 516 trillion dollar derivative bubble ready to blow which some experts have prophesied as the beginning of the collapse of our modern-day banking system. As we have learned from Warren Buffett, these highly lucrative, "financial weapons of mass destruction" (derivatives) inhabit the twilight world of leveraged lending where private contracts between financial giants are spawned safely beyond reach of government taxes and regulations.
In tandem with the fed pumping hundreds of billions of dollars of "liquidity preference" into the corporate coffers the Treasury, initially, promised to buy ownership stakes in many of the nation's troubled financial institutions with taxpayer's money on the premise that, while nobody could put real value on the sea of derivative papier-m‰chŽ, government experts thought that "it will be re-capitalized in time." However, there were a few who complained that the Treasury's and the Federal Reserves' johnny-come-lately actions would do little if anything to ameliorate the nation's credit hemorrhage. They have since been proven to be correct as many bankers, while tightening credit for little people, have used the bailout money to purchase other banks, payoff dividends, and to give themselves bonuses, and other extravaganzas. Meanwhile, as money markets around the world continue to sink because of their out-of-control risk taking, ex-Fed chief Mr. Greenspan declares that he is "shocked, just shocked to find that gambling is going on in his establishment." This coming from the man who's sovereign little organization, for reasons unknown, discontinued the publication of the highly informative "M3 Measure of Money" reports back in March of 2006. At this juncture please allow me to digress for a moment on the subject of contract.
In the real/legal world, contracts and money are, for all intent and purpose, synonymous. For those who are unconvinced, consider what the legal textbook "Contracts" by Calamari and Perillo of the Hornbook series (1970-7) by West Publishing says about the subject. 'Contract'-- "the relations among parties to the process of projecting exchange into the future." Personally, I would have added 'half-exchanges' to that assertion. At any rate, add that statement to David. T. Bazelon's, in his wonderful book, 'The Paper Economy', Random House (1963) "Money is a contract-the freest, most gorgeous contract of them all. Money is somebody else's promise to pay, to give me what I want, when I want it-the fully alienable contract for anything, anytime, anywhere." The point here that I'm trying to make is this; huge, transnational financial mega-monsters no longer deal in the kind of day-to-day "money" that you and I normally deal with. They contract out with one another in a shadowy financial world of unwritten constitutions. And it is in the dark and ulterior details of their unholy compacts that will serve to bite all humanity on its collective butt-again. But let me get back to the main issue.
Reacting to an overwhelming amount of criticism, Treasury Secretary Paulson reversed his earlier plan to purchase troubled assets-but it appears that the damage has already been done. According to Eve Tahmincioglu of MSNBC, the initial, rapid consolidation of the banking industry has left the nation with three 'superbanks'-Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Curiously, the anti-trust people in Washington appear little concerned about this. Considering the hugely beneficial monetary consequences of deregulation (little competition and virtually no government oversight) what will stop those three financial giants to further combine their newly acquired piles of dubious contracts into a single system of things? Just as important, what about the debt that underlies most of that collection of M3 promises-it will still have to be serviced. And that means that any recapitalization (future paper carrying said obligations) will need to represent something of tangible marketable value (i.e.-goods and services) it cannot (at least in the beginning) simply reflect the old trouble making intangible order of things. Moreover, some one will have to make the call as to what that something is worth in order for everyone else to stick a price on it. Here, I regard "value" as a singular concept of wealth while "wealth" as a collective concept of value.
Thus, it is my belief that in order to avoid a global systematic crash, the nations of the world, in a desperate rush to bolster their financial woes, will embrace Baron David de Rothschild's vision and advice of a New World Order in global banking governance and allow their respective currencies (and sovereignties) to be absorbed by an ultimate underwriter. Now, there's nothing new about an international money system--the BIS has been calling for one for years and the concept is being kicked around on a number of web sites. Still, no one has satisfactorily addressed the idea of what might be the worthy singularity capable of uniting the planet under one economic roof.
It is my fear that a global monetary system will employ the old technocratic dream of energy units. Far more important than gold, silver, wampum or ten thousand pound rocks under the water at high tide, electrical power is the one factor the entire modern world is dependant upon--already the global warming scare has given us those money/contract schemes which are dependent upon the promise of the future creation of energy. But if these carbon/emission/ pollution credits ever morph into an effective international means of exchange-the production, distribution, and usage of energy by the lower classes must be severely reduced if such a system of money is to work. Why?
The reason is simple. "Money isn't real." Bazelon says; "What [makes] it seem real for so long was its scarcity. Since money is supposed to be spent on things, its scarcity can truly reflect reality only when that reality is made of a general scarcity of things. This no longer is, except mostly by intention." [Accordingly] "The paper system is conceived in terms of scarcity. It is founded upon that concept. Since scarcity [by reason of modern technology] no longer occurs naturally in this country... there is probably no more profound personal issue that any of us will ever have to face than this one..."can we give up the scarcity idea? (The answer is a big fat NO) "Our business leaders confront abundance with horror because it would reduce the power of the paper world"
Not to mention the size of their overstuffed bank accounts.
You can bet that M3 will never be curtailed-and this will prove disastrous for the world's economies-- because M3 demands inflated capitalization and debt-not meant to be spent or invested in anything real or productive. It exists only to make more money-the "real" money, the moneyman's money. But for the rest of us who can in no way compete with the big players, our participation in any such future debt and credit system; based upon energy potential and represented by the above mentioned credits (or something of the equivalent) will mean a reduction of our quality of living. "Green" technology notwithstanding, laws will be passed to make sure that there will never be enough energy to go around no matter how much we "shrink our carbon footprint." By virtue of the use of this form of currency (it's still a contract after all) we little people will be the ones who are destined to be forced to turn off our lights and shiver in the dark if an energy based money is to retain it's value. President elect Obama, I heard, stands ready and willing to make CO2 a dangerous pollutant. Immediately, this will only serve to strengthen the illegitimacy and irresponsibility of the corporate sector-government's more noble, more deserving constituent base. The fact of the matter is, it didn't matter who took the reins of leadership in the election--Americans have long ago been classified as "power vampire" users and the "energy police" are ready to rock and roll.
Before the ultimate monetary power, the "lender of last resort", graciously assumes the world's debt, repackages it as a global currency and forces it's draconian considerations upon the world, call your representative (if there really is such a thing) and demand a comprehensive look into the hardcore facts of a world-wide monetary union. I would also like to see an intensive (ala; Pecora Commission) inquiry be held to investigate the ones responsible for the entire sordid Wall Street affair--but I expect my wish will always remain a pipe dream. At the very least we should demand that Congress pass an "Energy Consumer's Bill of Rights" that, among other things, would disallow any taxing agency to nick the newly emerging global ratepayer for the conversion of energy regardless of generation and usage.
Mick Lovett
Fort Bragg