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http://fromtheleft.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/sen-whitehouse-if-obama-wont-investigate-bush%E2%80%99s-crimes-i-will/
President-elect Obama this week said his team was in the midst of “evaluating” Bush administration policies to see whether a criminal investigation would be worthwhile. NPR reports that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says that he understands Obama’s reluctance to pursue investigations but that he may take matters into his own hands: “I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility.”
In a 487-page report out today recapping Bush’s “imperial presidency,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommends that “the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration.”
We just got this e-mail from an online reader and loved it! Thank you Beth, for keeping hope and humanity alive through your work and music.
Hello beloved PWW staff: From Beth Maples-Bays
I cannot tell you how much we look forward to reading PWW/Nuestro Mundo each week. I am a community activist and organize around issues of concern to women and lesbians. My mailbox is flooded with reading material of a wide variety within that context. I want you to know that the only thing my partner will read is PWW.
As an Appalachian woman, I have a rather unique perspective on the world. Sometimes I express my viewpoint in song, accompanied by my mountain dulcimer. Recently I wrote new lyrics to the anthem for the 1931 coal strike in Harlan County, Kentucky - “Which Side Are You On?” Although I am a born and bred East Tennessean, my partner’s family hails from Knox County, Kentucky. Knox County shares a border with Harlan County. My now-deceased father-in-law equivalent, Albert Bennett, was active in the UMW local there. He mined for more than 40 years.
Here are the lyrics revamped for our current situation:
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? - 2008
An Appalachian womon’s (sic) lament
by Beth Maples-Bays
The oil man’s in the White House;
Wall Street just bit the dust.
Foreclosure on your Mama’s house
Is anything but just
(CHORUS)
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Workin’ folks are desperate To set food on the table.
It takes three checks to pay the bills, And we just lost our cable.
CHORUS
Wimmin folks a-strugglin’ to try And do it all.
Knowin’ there just ain’t now way They’ll ever break their fall.
CHORUS
Iraq War is draining
Our coffers and our souls.
Troops come home so damaged They go right on the dole.
CHORUS
Public schools are goin’ down.
Children just can’t learn.
GOP’s almighty buck Is harder now to earn.
CHORUS
Black bears are a-starvin’, Get shot when they come down.
Tourists leave pollution All over White Oak Town.
CHORUS
Queers ain’t seen as human, Hispanics same as dogs.
All the while, the man reaps profits Like a big ‘ol hog.
CHORUS
The winds of change are blowin’ All across this land.
The People reckon now’s the time We’ve got to take a stand.
CHORUS
REPEAT
If you choose to use these lyrics as a poetry submission, please note that they are my original composition. The copy that I have used to learn the tune and the original lyrics indicate they were copyrighted in 1974 by Storm King Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission in Source: The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, p. 70 (930. Also: (43). The words were written by Florence Reece. The music is traditional. I play it on my hourglass mountain dulcimer in the key of D.
Thank you for helping us keep hope alive,
Beth Maples-Bays
Remember the trickle down theory of economics? I think this started under the Reagan administration with the idea that giving all kinds of breaks to the guys at the top would some how trickle down to benefit the rest of us. As if a trickle was what we needed! I always said I was in favor of the trickle up theory. Give us all the money and just see how the economy would benefit!
You know how it is, when you read about someone who won it big on the lottery what do they say they are going to do with it? Pay off their debts, put aside money for their kids’ college education, buy a new car and a big new TV, take a nice vacation, maybe even start up a small business. Sounds to me like all that would benefit the economy.
So I would suggest that Bush instead of giving $700 billion in bailouts at the top—by the way, that’s $700,000,000,000.00, quite a lot of zeros isn’t it? —don’t hand that out to the guys at the top whose greed or stupidity caused this mess to begin with. No, give it out to us and we will pay off some of our debt, save some of it and spend some of it—the holidays are coming. And let the benefits trickle up for a change.
By the way, the population of the U.S. these days is over 300 million (that’s 300,000,000) plus about 4 million for Puerto Rico (that’s 4,000,000). So the $700 billion bailout averages to about $2300 from (instead of for) every one of us. This week.
Big lies from Big Oil
By Tim Wheeler
Labor, environmentalists: Offshore drilling is just a profit scam
The proposal by President Bush and Sen. John McCain to lift the federal ban on offshore oil drilling will do nothing to reduce gasoline prices but will risk permanent damage to the coastal waters and marine wildlife, according to environmentalists and energy experts.
Bush made the proposal June 19. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, earlier made the same proposal to open the way for drilling off the coasts of Alaska, California, Florida and other states where a ban on the practice has been in effect. They claimed pumping offshore crude will provide relief for motorists hammered with gasoline prices zooming toward $5 per gallon.
Tim Hamilton, president of the Automotive United Trade Association (AUTO), a group of 600 independent gas station owners in Washington State, told the World Bush’s proposal is just another giveaway to the Big Oil profiteers.
“Herein lies the Big Lie: That you can drill in the arctic, drill in offshore coastal waters and it will lower the price at the pump,” Hamilton said. “It is a Big Lie because Big Oil already has leases offshore and in Alaska that they are not drilling now.” The real aim of Bush’s proposal, he said, “is to get these leases signed and sealed now while they have the friendliest president in American history in the White House. These are resources that belong to the American people. This is a war between a handful of oil companies and the American people.”
In 2006, Hamilton wrote a report, “Why Gasoline Prices are Headed for $3.50 At the Pump.” Now, he said, gas prices are headed toward $5 per gallon with retailers getting only a miniscule 16 cents per gallon. The winner, he said, “is an illegal, immoral cartel whose only concern is maximum profits.”
Democratic lawmakers convened a Capitol Hill news conference June 19 to unveil their “use it or lose it” bill to force oil companies to either drill for oil on the 68 million acres of lands they already lease from the federal government or lose those leases. Speaking in Las Vegas June 24 Obama strongly endorsed the legislation.
Melanie Duchin, a Greenpeace campaigner in Anchorage, Alaska, told the World in a telephone interview, “The Bush administration refuses to do the math. We burn 24 percent of the world’s oil yet we only have three percent of the world’s oil reserves. Even if we drilled every last drop of oil in this country, we could never drill our way to lower gasoline prices. This is just smoke and mirrors to line the pockets of the oil companies.”
The Greenpeace web site features photos of Duchin helping in the cleanup from the shipwreck of a Malaysian freighter that fouled a pristine stretch of the Alaskan shoreline with thousands of gallons of oil.
Duchin helped spearhead the drive that forced the Interior Department to declare the polar bear “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. It was a step forward, but short of a victory, she said. The polar bear should be designated as “endangered,” she said.
Duchin decried the plight of Arctic wildlife as the permafrost melts, the ice sheet and glaciers retreat, and forests are decimated by the spruce beetle. Entire villages of the native peoples of Alaska are swallowed by rising sea levels, she said.
“This is an issue of environmental justice. Poor people and people of color bear a disproportionate share of the burden from global climate change. We are at ground zero in a global war.”
The answer, she said is shifting to renewable forms of energy like wind and solar power. Sierra Club President Carl Pope responded by announcing his organization’s endorsement of Democrat Barack Obama at a June 19 news conference in Cleveland. Pope and Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, stood together in front of a giant wind turbine at the joint news conference. Pope said they believe Obama “will put America on the path to a clean energy economy that will create and keep millions of jobs, spur innovation and opportunity, make us a more secure nation and help us solve global warming.” Gerard said the USWA and the Sierra Club “are standing together in support of Barack Obama because we all share the common goal of putting America back to work by building a clean energy economy.”
The Sierra Club began running a radio ad across Ohio blasting McCain. “Fact is, John McCain opposes requiring the use of more wind and solar power to generate electricity,” the announcer says. “He argued against incentives for the clean energy industry while demanding billions in subsidies for nuclear power and refusing to impose windfall profits taxes on Big Oil.”
Earlier, the Sierra Club blasted the Bush-McCain offshore drilling scheme. “The truth is that drilling our coasts will not solve our energy problems,” Pope said. “An offshore spill off the coast of Virginia would impact beaches, marine life, and tourism in New Jersey. Lifting the ban would do nothing to reduce gas prices for the average American family. It would take a decade to bring new leases into production and then they would only line the coffers of the oil industry which raked in tens of billions of dollars in record profits last year.”
greenerpastures21212 @yahoo.com
High crimes charge leveled at Bush, Cheney
By Rick Nagin
Efforts to impeach and even prosecute President Bush are gaining wider support as anger mounts over his administration’s disregard for the Constitution and what many see as its continuing gross negligence and criminal behavior.
After Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) introduced 35 articles of impeachment in Congress June 9, their offices were flooded with calls from people throughout the country asking what they can do to help.
Kucinich started a petition on his web site (www.kucinich.us) to collect one million signatures asking members of Congress to back the measure, which has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee headed by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.).
Within days Veterans for Peace presented Conyers with 23,000 signatures on their own petition asking for impeachment hearings.
Respected voices in the legal community have voiced support for impeachment and urged that the issues raised involved not be dropped. Jonathan Turley, noted Constitutional law professor at George Washington University, said on Keith Olberman’s “Countdown” June 10 that there is a “real crisis” and many experts in the field were “quite worried” that the Democratic leadership in the House continues to insist that impeachment is “off the table” in the face of “clear presidential crimes.”
The crimes cited by Kucinich include lying to promote and wage an illegal war in Iraq, illegal surveillance and detention, torture and destruction of evidence.
This record was driven home by the release June 18 of a report by the Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights. The group examined 11 men who had been freed without charges after being held for three years in the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo, Cuba, and found that they had been systematically subjected to torture including waterboarding, beatings, electric shocks and sexual assault.
In the preface to the report, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who previously investigated the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the U.S. military prison Abu Ghraib, stated “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
“Having led the Army’s investigation at Abu Ghraib,” Kucinich said, “Gen. Taguba is an authoritative voice on the administration’s rogue policies and systematic use of torture. His words remind us once again why Congress must act to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney.”
While no action has been taken in response to previous articles of impeachment he filed against Cheney, Kucinich has vowed that, if Congress fails to act on the resolution against Bush, he will return in 30 days with more articles of impeachment.
CNN commentator Jack Cafferty has also called on Congress to act and said that failure to do so in light of such overwhelming evidence “boggles the mind.”
A call for even more serious action has come from Vincent Bugliosi, former Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney and author of a recent best-selling book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” Bugliosi, who successfully prosecuted 21 murder cases, charged that, by taking the nation to war under false pretenses, Bush is guilty under the law of the murder of the more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq.
In an interview with Democracy Now! June 13 Bugliosi said his book documents facts that Bush had been clearly told by the CIA that Iraq posed no threat to U.S. security and that Bush had made clear to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Charges that Bush misled the nation about the reasons for invading Iraq were also made in the recent report of the Senate Intelligence Committee and by Bush’s former press secretary, Scott McClellan.
Virtually all opinion polls now show that two-thirds of the American people disapprove of the job Bush has done and it appears that more and more people are no longer afraid to speak out and demand an accounting for his actions in office.
Disputing claims that there is not enough time to conduct impeachment proceedings before Bush leaves office next January, Kucinich told Democracy Now!
“George Bush has enough time to bomb Iran on another pretext. He has enough time to continue policies of torture. He has enough time to continue policies of eavesdropping and wiretapping.
“We don’t have enough time. We can’t spend any more time temporizing, while the Constitution, the United States laws, international laws, are being shredded.”
Plan Bush-McCain no bajará precio de gasolina
Por Tim Wheeler
La propuesta del presidente Bush y el senador John McCain de revocar las prohibiciones en contra de explotar yacimientos de petróleo en la costa no hará nada para bajar el precio del combustible pero sí causará daños permanente a la costa y la vida silvestre marítima, de acuerdo a ambientalistas y expertos energéticos.
Bush hizo la propuesta el junio 19. McCain, presunto candidato republicano, hizo la misma propuesta anterior para la explotación en las costas dea Alaska, California, Florida y otros estados.
Tim Hamilton, presidente de Automotive United Trade Association (AUTO), que representa a 600 gasolineras independiente en el estado de Washington, nos dijo que la propuesta es un regalo a las corporaciones de petróleo. “Aquí está la mentira: que si uno explota el Ártico y la costa baja el precio de la gasolina”. Hamilton siguió, “Es una gran mentira porque las grandes corporaciones ya están explotando los yacimientos ahora”. La meta verdadera de la propuesta es otorgarle más contratos a las petroleras “ahora que tiene el presidente más amistoso [a la petroleras] de la historia norteamericana”, dijo.
En el 2006, Hamilton escribió un reporte titulado, “Por qué el precio de gasolina va llegar a $3,50 el galón”. Ahora dice que el preció está en camino a $5. El que gana en esto “es un cartel ilegal, inmoral cuya única preocupación es su beneficio máximo”.
Melanie Duchin, del grupo ambientalista Greenpeace an Anchorage, Alaska, dijo, “El gobierno Bush se niega hacer la matemática. Quemamos 24 por ciento del petróleo mundial y solo tenemos tres por ciento de las reservas. Aunque saquemos todo el petróleo hasta la última gota, nunca podremos bajar el precio de la gasolina. Esto son trucos para beneficiar a las petroleras”.
Duchin ayudó dirigir la campaña que declarara el oso polar una especie en amenazada con la extinción.
Ella habló del peligro a la vida silvestre del Ártico mientras el permahielo, la capa de hielo y los glaciares se derriten y los bosques caen víctimas a escarabajos. Aldeas completas de los pueblos originarios de Alaska se los está tragando el mar, ella dijo.
“Esto es una cuestión de justicia ambiental. La gente pobre y los de color tienen una carga desproporcionada de los males por los cambios climáticos globales. Estamos en el punto cero de una guerra global”.La solución, dijo ella, es cambiar a formas renovables de energía como solar y viento.
El presidente del Club Sierra, Carl Pope, respondió anunciando que su organización está apoyando a Barack Obama para la presidencia. Pope dijo que él cree que Obama pondrá al país en un “sendero hacia una economía de energía limpia que creará y mantendrá a millones de empleos, animará la innovación y la oportunidad, hacernos una nación más segura y ayudarnos encontrar soluciones al calentamiento global”.
Anterior el Club Sierra había criticado al plan de explotación costanera. “La verdad es que explotar los yacimientos en la costa no va a resolver nuestros problemas de energía”, dijo Pope. “Un derrame en la costa de Virginia causaría impacto en las playas, vida marítima, y el turismo en Nueva Jersey. Levantar al prohibiciones no haría nada para reducir el precio de la gasolina para la familia típica norteamericana”.
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