Value-added analysis and commentary on economic and social affairs. The blog name is my handle; G D A E are the four notes on a violin or mandolin; music is one of my diversions.
With new documentary evidence in hand, a new federal civil lawsuit has been filed Ohio election attorneys, Cliff Arnebeck, Bob Fitrakis and Henry Eckhart. They will use the discover process take depositions from Rove’s computer consultant Michael Connell, Karl Rove, Michael Connell, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Bob Ney, Brett Rapp, Ken Blackwell and others. The information gathered will be shared with state and federal authorities for criminal prosecution.
Republican computer consultant Stephen Spoonamore is blowing the whistle. He has stated publicly that the leadership of the GOP has been "lying and stealing elections."
Much more could be said, and you can dig into it at The Velvet Revolution Web Site, but right now we need ACTION. This legal effort needs funding in anticipation of major retaliation by the Rove machine. Make a Secure Donation to prosecute Karl Rove.
And there are more dots to connect. First, this activity is far more insidious than the sealing of elections in Florid and Ohio. It's clear that a the US Attorney firing scandal has a deeper plot that is connected to voter suppression on a massive scale.
Second, there are foreign dots to connect. The Bush administration is implicated in two recent cases. We hear reports like the following:
U.S. tensions with Russia are on the rise over accusations of vote-meddling. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Bush administration of trying to taint parliamentary elections set for next week. Putin says the U.S. influenced European monitors to cancel plans to observe the vote.
Why? Because, months after everyone has forgotten this news blip, Bush's "set up" will allow his operatives to say, "there were no monitors in the Russian election," thereby casting doubt on the election's legitimacy. The violation is so egregious that Vladimir Putin himself spoke out in response (translated):
We have information that, once again, this was done on the recommendation of the U.S. State Department. We, of course, will take this into account in our inter-state dealings; this is for sure. Actions such as these cannot wreck the elections in Russia. Their aim is to deprive the elections of legitimacy, that is absolutely clear. But they are not going to achieve that [1].
Clip of Putin Statement
Then, on November 28, 2007, we heard Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro reveal that he had a document that appeared to be from an American at the embassy in Caracas referring to a plan to impede a referendum on Sunday to consider giving new powers to the Venezuelan executive branch.
If it's true, we are going to declare this official from the U.S. Embassy persona non grata and eject him from the country because he would have been interfering in the internal matters of Venezuela. [2]
But it doesn’t stop there. The Republicans have institutionalized their elections interference through the US taxpayer funded “National Endowment for Democracy.” This nice sounding institution funded the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP, to run training sessions for the youth wing of the right wing Mexican PAN political party and fund a US corporation to collect data that was likely used to suppress votes.
The illegal operations all involve pre-election suppression tactics. The US company ChoicePoint, which helped purge Florida voter rolls prior to 2000 election, is implicated widely. According to BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast. Referring to ChoicePoint, which received a no-bid contract from the Bush administration to collect data supposedly for use in "fighting terrorism," it appears the information was used to scrub voter rolls or to cage voters and create challenge lists:
Foreign — that is, American — interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn’t stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes — and Mexico’s attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron.
Similar operations were conducted in Venezuela using ChoicePoint.
More suppression occurs during the voting process, such as challenging voters via caging lists developed prior to the election, allocating too few voting machines in targeted districts to create long lines, changing polling places to sow confusion or force the use of provisional ballots, which are less likely to be counted, etc, which leads to...
One can go on and on about what can no longer be denied. The Bush Republicans have been conducting illegal voter suppression campaigns, inside and outside the United States, on a sophisticated level, and continue to do so. If this makes your blood boil, check out Black Box Voting, citizens who are taking action.
Subprime mortgage defaults have been moved into the news spotlight as a result of recent stock market "corrections." The recent stock drops were caused, in part, by concern that major US commercial banks, pension funds and trusts might be financially exposed to subprime mortgage woes.
But the "news" about a crisis in the subprime mortgage market is actually old. The Oct-Sept issue of Mother Jones magazine carried a piece entitled, "Prime Suspect." It exposes the makings of another Savings and Loan crisis that might be unraveling.
The piece opens:
Cleveland is on the front lines of a housing boom gone soure. So how are the bankers, brokers, and speculators still generating massive profits?
Good question. Meanwhile, the article describes people's lives being ruptured. Robert Perry's mortgage holder, Bank One, moved to foreclose on his home of 14 years when he came up $250 short on a debt settlement payment of $2,565. Barbara and Rober Anderson, in Cleveland's Slavic Village, watched the houses in their neighborhood go vacant as 376 houses were foreclosed upon in 2005. For all of Cuyahoga County, there were 11,000 foreclosures.
Sheriff's auctions of homes are common, and the banks are buying back some houses at bargain prices. The courts are so full, and the predatory stories so sad, that some judges are throwing out cases for typos and minor errors in a show of resistance. Referring to defaults, Chief Magistrate Stephen Bucha says, "It started because of changes in lending practices," enabled by the U.S. Congress.
Since Congress won't want to take the blame, they will down-play the growing significance of the corrupt real estate market, and pass off the costs to the tax-payer... unless we don't let them.
Contact the Media:
You can be sure the right-wingers would be firing off e-mails to corporate media offices if they were in our shoes. So, tell the media outlets that "we want you to cover the corruption associated with the unraveling Subprime Mortgage Crisis."
With new documentary evidence in hand, a new federal civil lawsuit has been filed Ohio election attorneys, Cliff Arnebeck, Bob Fitrakis and Henry Eckhart. They will use the discover process take depositions from Rove’s computer consultant Michael Connell, Karl Rove, Michael Connell, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, Bob Ney, Brett Rapp, Ken Blackwell and others. The information gathered will be shared with state and federal authorities for criminal prosecution.
