Friday, June 17, 2011
Anthony Weiner Resignation Puts Scrutiny on Delinquent Lawmakers Who Kept Jobs - ABC News
Worse Than Weiner? Some Delinquent Lawmakers Kept Their Jobs
By DEVIN DWYER (@devindwyer) and Z. BYRON WOLF (@zbyronwolf)
Anthony Weiner screwed up. And he ultimately lost his job for it.
But there are some things the former New York congressman could have gotten away with, including driving under the influence and crashing into a capital office building barricade in the wee hours of the morning.
He also could have failed to pay his taxes, sought treatment for alcoholism, had a love child, married his lover, cheated with a staffer's wife, gotten caught by federal agents with hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribe money stuffed into his freezer or been found to frequent hookers.
Members of Congress guilty of those transgressions and other crimes have served out their terms, often with few, if any, calls that they resign.
Yet, Weiner taking a picture of his bulging underwear, posting it on the Internet, and later boldly lying about it, laid bare the wrath of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, congressional Democrats and official Washington like no other scandal in recent memory.
In all of her 20 years in Congress, Pelosi had never before publicly called on a fellow Democrat to resign until Weiner.
When Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana was indicted on 16 federal counts in 2007, neither then-Speaker Pelosi nor Majority Leader Steny Hoyer ever explicitly called on him to step down.
Jefferson, who denied wrongdoing, served out his term despite the swirling allegations and intensive ethics investigations, and was only later tried, found guilty and sentenced to prison.
Pelosi and other party leaders also avoided public calls for the resignation of Rep. Jim Traficant of Ohio before he was expelled from Congress in 2002 after a felony conviction, or of Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who was found guilty of 11 violations of House ethics rules and formally censured late last year.
"Usually, presidents stay out of this stuff because it's just tradition for Congress to decide its own matters," said Princeton University political historian Julian Zelizer. "I can't remember a comparable scandal when a president did that. It's a very easy thing not to say anything.
"The irony of the Weiner situation is that there have been scandals when the leadership has been much more quiet in both parties," he added.
The House Ethics Committee late last year found Rangel -- the former chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which writes the nation's tax laws -- guilty of improper fundraising, inappropriate possession of multiple rent-controlled apartments and failure to pay taxes on a vacation home. But few leaders called on him to resign.
"He was censured of serious misconduct involving his office -- really serious things that had potential for criminal charges," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning watchdog group. "We don't have anything remotely like that in the Weiner case."
Prominent Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who had also called on Weiner to resign, have declined to make similar pronouncements following alleged transgressions of their conservative peers.
Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, who admitted ties to the so-called D.C. Madam prostitution ring and later apologized, may have actually committed a crime of soliciting a prostitute. But he remains in office.
"I'm not relitigating the David Vitter situation," Republican National Committee chairman Reince Preibus told Fox News when asked if party leaders were being hypocritical.
During the months-long investigation into Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and his alleged cover up of a sex scandal with the wife of his former top aide, there were similarly no prominent public calls for him to resign.
The Senate Ethics Committee concluded earlier this year that Ensign made false statements to the Federal Election Commission and violated campaign finance laws and referred the case to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges. Ensign abruptly resigned just before the findings were released.
"Congressional leaders traditionally, at least since the 1960s, have been more willing to deal with personal scandals than the kind of scandals that touch on the way Congress works," Zelizer said. "This was about him [Weiner], and pictures and Twitter, and there's kind of a safety in dealing with that issue. It's less comfortable to talk about interest groups and their contributions to Congress."
Sloan speculated that the treatment Weiner received may have stemmed from a precedent set by Boehner in two recent "personal scandal" cases involving Republican congressmen.
At the first sign of sexual misconduct, Boehner urged Reps. Mark Souder, R-Ind., and Chris Lee, R-N.Y., to resign, even though their behavior didn't appear to involve any abuse of their office or illegal behavior.
Souder, an eight-term congressman and staunch social conservative, admitted to an extra-marital affair with a staffer and abruptly resigned in May 2010. Lee quit his office in February shortly after a shirtless photo he texted to a woman on Craigslist surfaced on the Internet.
"This is a massive overreaction and I don't understand it," Sloan said of the pressure on Weiner in an interview earlier this week.
"I think there will be a public backlash when people start to think about what [Weiner] is really accused of doing. And is this the most serious thing a politician has done when most people are really concerned about politicians selling their office to special interests?" she asked. "There's no kind of that allegation here."
Anthony Weiner Resignation Puts Scrutiny on Delinquent Lawmakers Who Kept Jobs - ABC News
The New American Revolution Must Begin in Your Mind (Part 1 of 6)
In 1970 the late Gil Scott-Heron wrote ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’—a poem which famously became one of many rallying cries for resistance in the African-American community during the Civil Rights movement and which later gained wider popularity to represent the rallying cry of would-be revolutionaries of all races and creeds throughout the world. In his poem, with congas and bongo drums beating a methodical, pulsing rhythm, Scott-Heron proclaimed in a defiant and chaotic cadence:
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised…
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised…
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
In an interview many years later Scott-Heron was asked about the poem, and more specifically the meaning of the message behind the “the revolution would not be televised.” He said modern revolutions take place in the mind. “The powers that be” rely on mind control to keep you in your place and thinking you cannot effect change.
The new American Revolution is going to take place in the mind. The same kind of mind which inspired a young Indian lawyer to spark a revolution against a seemingly omnipotent British Empire through non-violent civil disobedience in 1915. The same mind which emboldened an African-American woman in Montgomery, Alabama to refuse to sit in the back of a public bus in 1955 and spark a Civil Rights revolution that would fight against 400 years of oppression, slavery, and segregation. The same mind that empowered one man with a vegetable cart in a Tunisian village to spark a revolution in December 2010 and overthrow an Arab autocracy without firing one bullet and which ignited an Arab Spring that spread revolutions in a part of the world the rest of humanity was convinced would never see change.
History is replete with minds kindling sparks and igniting flames which emblaze pathways toward revolution, reform, and change.
Your mind is far more powerful than the establishment would have you believe. The establishment needs you more than you need them, and this is precisely why they endeavor to keep you mindless. It’s what they’re banking on (pun definitely intended). Your mind is the only thing that stands between their domination of the world and your independence and liberation as an individual.
I say this because as I continue to write about political reform and revolution, I am often criticized of being a day-dreaming idealist. “We are powerless to make change,” I am often told, “those who are in power will never give us the opportunity to effect any real change.”
What an absurd cop out frankly. Of course you will never be gift-wrapped an opportunity and have it handed to you by the establishment. Was Gandhi gift-wrapped an opportunity by the British for Christ's sake? Rather you must decide in your mind to seize opportunity when you see it and take it and never let it go. In the manner Mohandas Gandhi did in India and Rosa Parks did in Montgomery and Muhammad Bouazizi did in Tunisia.
Open your eyes (and mind) for a moment. It’s happening all around you—people are seizing opportunity and running with it. Look at the Middle East. Look at Spain, Greece, Ireland. Look at Madison, Wisconsin smack-dab in the middle of middle-America. It’s unfolding right in front of you. Have the courage to seize this opportunity for change and stand up to the oligarchy of banks, corporations, and military industrialists who have been denying you the very freedom you claim you lack the power to fight for.
In a previous ZPP article entitled ‘An American Person's Declaration of Independence from the Un-American Corporate Oligarchy', I wrote a “Declaration of Independence” which emulated our country’s original Declaration of Independence and edited it to represent the needs of a modern America that would declare the rights of individual Americans over the international corporate oligarchy which I believe has usurped our rights as Americans, and which I believe has perverted our democracy and turned it into a near fascist state.
I proposed we take to the streets on July 4, 2011 and walk to our federal buildings and Congressperson’s office and duct tape this new Declaration of Independence to their buildings and offices. I also proposed we follow through on several action items that would allow, “We the People” to effectuate a revolution non-violently, peacefully, but with a tangible plan to bring this oligarchy to its knees.
I received quite a bit of feedback on that article which included several requests to delve further into the action-items I highlighted in my modernized Declaration of Independence. Accordingly, I thought it would be helpful to break those action-items down to both explain their importance relative to the ultimate goal of revolution, and to also describe how they can practically be applied. This article will be one in a series of six that will focus on each action-item in an attempt to answer that call.
In part, here is what the Declaration called for:
It is the People’s intention to disseminate this Declaration over the course of the next months until the date July 4, 2011 where the People shall adopt it as their official Declaration of Independence from the Oligarchy. The People shall march to their local Federal Buildings and Congressmen’s Offices on that day, and peacefully present this Document to the Oligarchy with their signatures and pledges. The People vow to:
1) withdraw all their deposits from the Oligarchy’s banks,
2) divest all their stock holdings in the Oligarchy’s corporations (particularly corporations in the so-called “defense” industry, financial industry, and any company that has not paid corporate income tax over the past year who has declared profits),
3) refuse to vote for any Oligarchic candidate identifying him or herself as a Democrat or Republican on any ballot for any political office,
4) refuse in the future to enlist in any of the Oligarchy’s military force,
5) conscientiously object to any foreign deployment for those of the People who are presently enlisted in the Oligarchy’s military while continuing to defend the borders of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic, and
6) recognizing that the Oligarchic “justice” system refuses to prosecute its own racketeers who prolifically operate financial criminal enterprises, the People, when summoned to sit as jurors in federal or state criminal courts of the Oligarchy, refuse to convict any of their fellow People accused of acts deemed as “crimes” by the Oligarchy other than those involving violence or theft against the People.
Each item is designed to attack a prong of the oligarchic structure which maintains control over individual Americans. The structure is in place, with the assistance of mainstream media, to exercise manipulation of the masses. The structure cannot function without our willing participation, and in understanding this, “the powers that be” rely on convincing you that you need the structure more than it needs you. This is a fallacy—they need us far more than we need them.
Don’t allow them to get into your mind.
This article will address the issue of the first action item—namely the withdrawal of our deposits from the major banking institutions which rely on those deposits to perpetuate an elaborate Ponzi scheme ensuring they have money when they need it, and when push comes to shove, there is no money left for you when you need it.
Am I being a melodramatic alarmist?
When the nation ran out of money three years ago—the Troubled Asset Relief Program (more commonly referred to as “TARP”) bailed every last one of them out with your tax money and allowed them to post record profits and bonus their executives tens of millions of dollars. What did you get out of it? Your home got foreclosed, your interest rates went up on your credit card while your borrowing allowance went down, your interest rates went down on your cash deposits and Certificates of Deposit, your banking fees went up, and good luck re-financing or modifying your existing home loan if you managed to escape foreclosure.
You see this is what happens when the money dries up in a Ponzi scheme. The con-men at the top of the pyramid get the money and the suckers at the bottom of the pyramid get stuck with nothing but promises that are as empty as their bank accounts.
Stop being a sucker and stop giving them your money to play with.
In a March 24, 2011 Wall Street Journal article the 50 largest banks in this country (most of whom received TARP bailouts) were identified. Please click on to the hyperlink and find your bank. If it’s named on there, immediately withdraw your deposits and credit cards and either invest in a small neighborhood bank, or better yet, a credit union, where you will find that service is infinitely better, fees are either non-existent or nominal, and where your deposits are also guaranteed by the federal government. Here are the top 10 banks on that list of 50 cited to in the Wall Street Journal:
1. Bank of America
2. JP Morgan Chase
3. Citigroup
4. Wells Fargo
5. HSBC
6. U.S. Bancorp
7. PNC Financial Services Group
8. Bank of New York Mellon Group
9. Capital One
10. TD Bank US Holding Company
If you really want to blow a gasket and are wondering how TARP got passed so quickly in Congress without so much as a debate (like the Patriot Act—but that’s a story for another day), take a gander at the top TARP money recipients in relation to their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures as revealed in this February 4, 2009 article on OpenSecrets.org. It’s as illuminating as it is infuriating (note nearly every one of those 50 banks donated to lobbyists and campaigns and were generously rewarded when the TARP kickbacks were paid out to them. Bank of America received $45,000,000,000 of your tax dollars. Citigroup received $50,000,000,000. Wells Fargo $25,000,000,000. Chase $25,000,000,000. Go down the list. The amounts are staggering. The total bailout figures, in aggregate, amount to the GDP of some first-world countries.
So how did these banks respond after you so generously gave them $700,000,000,000 (that’s $700 BILLION) to bail them out?
They foreclosed on you of course and took your homes. According to RealtyTrac , lenders filed for foreclosure on 3.8 million properties in 2010, which was up 2% from 2009, and an increase of 23% from 2008. Fasten your seat belts though, because 2011 is supposed to be even worse. In short, that’s $700 billion that was forced up to the top of the pyramid, without one thin red dime “trickling down” to you.
So absent cashing out all your money and investing in gold bullion and hiding cash under your mattress, what’s the alternative to handing over your money to these institutionalized con-men operating this for-profit internationally legalized Ponzi scheme? (Incidentally, I am not engaging in hyperbole or exaggeration, this is literally a Ponzi scheme—they are not holding anywhere near enough money to cover your deposits.)
The answer is in the theme for this revolution we’re seeking. Invest in “mom and pop.” Invest in individuals at the local level. With people you know. With people that are not another cog in the institutional wheel. Invest in living, breathing, individuals who have a stake in maintaining a relationship with you. This is how American businesses were born, and pardon the cliché, it’s what made this country great.
Invest in George Baily and his Bedford Falls handshake, not in Chase Bank and their phone pool in India.
The closest thing you’re going to get in this context is your local credit union, and I’ll explain why. First, credit unions are non-profit. They are not designed to push you and your needs aside to make way for profits. Which means no ridiculous monthly fees to maintain a checking account, which means cheaper interest rates on your credit cards, and which also means you will soon be on a first name basis with everyone who works there. They’ll know you—who you are, what you need, how to take care of you—all without having to refer you to an 800 number that shoots you over to a phone pool where some guy with no last name, no accountability, and no care in the world other than to try to get through your call as quickly as possible tries to figure out your history and banking issues by reading notes on a computer screen left by the last guy or gal without a last name, who couldn’t help you or otherwise gave a damn about you.
There are no anonymous people at credit unions. They have last names. They shake your hand and smile at you. If you need them to sign a letter and put their names on it, they’ll actually do it.
You want to know why?
Credit Unions are owned by their membership. If you have an account there, you are a member, and you have an ownership stake. This gives you the right to run and vote to be a member of the Board of Directors, and you get one vote regardless of how much or how little money you have deposited in there.
Your money is also insured by the federal government just as it would be in a for-profit bank. Your savings are federally insured to $100,000 by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA). This is a government agency. Moreover, many credit unions are privately insured for $250,000 by Excess Share Insurance Corporation, Inc. (ESI) to a total of $350,000. IRA's are also insured through NCUA up to $250,000. Many credit unions also privately insure their IRA’s for $250,000 by ESI for a total of $500,000.
Does that sound easy enough for you in terms of starting a revolution? (This isn’t exactly Che Guevara running to the Cuban jungle and fighting dysentery and Batista’s army.) Here’s your revolutionary homework assignment for this week. Action item one for this non-violent revolt is to get your money out of for-profit banks, particularly the top 50, and get them into non-profit credit unions. You can spend an hour out of your day accomplishing this. You’ll feel better. You’ll get better service. You’ll pay reduced fees. You will have a tangible stake in the credit union and a say in how your money and the union’s money are handled. Best of all—no anonymous people in a phone pool without last names will ever be entrusted with your life savings ever again. If only 20% of Americans did this, these institutional for-profit banks will begin crumbling and we’ll put a significant chink in this oligarchy’s armor.
Resolve to do at least this within the next week. We’ll talk about the next action item around then.
Remember, this revolution will not be televised and it will not happen around you or in your history books. It will happen through you and by you. It will begin in your mind. Stop letting these oligarchs control your mind and make you think you are powerless. Your mind is where this revolution will start. At its most basic, your mind is little more than a collection of human tissue, a blood supply, and neurological impulses. For all practical purposes your mind is indistinguishable from the minds of Mohandas Gandhi, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Bouazizi. The only difference is when they realized they had an opportunity to seize, they seized it and never turned back.
Zero Party Politics: The New American Revolution Must Begin in Your Mind (Part 1 of 6)
Republican New York Senator Comes Out For Gay Marriage With Awesome Quote
Republican New York Senator Comes Out For Gay Marriage With Awesome Quote
Senator Roy McDonald. "You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing," McDonald, 64, told reporters. "You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. "I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this."
Republican New York Senator Comes Out For Gay Marriage With Awesome Quote - Featured on BuzzFeed
Man set house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter
Man set house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter
But sparks reached material behind the cladding and caused a fire within the walls, shortly before midnight.
Three fire engines raced to the scene in Portsmouth, Hants, and found the man trying to put out the flames with a garden hose.
Firefighters in breathing apparatus removed the cladding and spent two hours putting the fire out.
Watch manager Steve Pearce said: "The man was trying to put the fire out with a garden hose when we arrived.
"The whole thing had clearly scared the life out of him.
"There was a gap in the cladding where he was trying to kill the spider and so the sparks got through to the material behind and started spreading upwards towards the roof.
"Our concern was that it would reach the roof and the property would be lost.
"We sent firefighters up into the loft to put it out and fortunately we were able to stop it in time.
"Surprisingly there wasn't much damage to the house other than to the cladding.
"We obviously had a chat with the man but I don't think he'll be doing this again."
"There was a gap in the cladding where he was trying to kill the spider and so the sparks got through to the material behind and started spreading upwards towards the roof.
"Our concern was that it would reach the roof and the property would be lost.
"We sent firefighters up into the loft to put it out and fortunately we were able to stop it in time.
"Surprisingly there wasn't much damage to the house other than to the cladding.
"We obviously had a chat with the man but I don't think he'll be doing this again."
Man set house on fire while trying to kill a spider with a lighter - Telegraph
Did Babe Ruth really call his shot at Wrigley Field?
Did Babe Ruth really call his shot at Wrigley Field?
By JOE COWLEY
Did he or didn’t he?
Almost 79 years later, it’s still one of the more debatable moments in baseball folklore: Did George Herman Ruth — ‘‘The Babe’’ — really call his shot in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series against the Cubs? Or is it better that we never know?
Does reviewing old 16-millimeter home movies and interviewing sons and granddaughters of players who were involved in the game tarnish what is better left untouched as baseball legend?
‘‘I think that’s right,’’ author and baseball historian George Will said when he was asked Thursday about letting the ‘‘called shot’’ stay a great baseball story. ‘‘[With] the Loch Ness Monster, you can at least say, ‘Well, maybe tomorrow he’ll stick his head up out of the water.’ But [with Ruth], we’re never really going to know, and baseball thrives on arguments.
‘‘ ‘Who is the best left-handed pinch hitter from South Dakota?’ Baseball fans will argue about anything, and this is a hearty perennial for the cold, winter months.’’
Or a reminder of that history in the heat of interleague play in June.
Beginning today, the New York Yankees come to Wrigley for three games. That means the pinstripes, the swagger and the history. It means Gehrig, DiMaggio and, of course ‘‘The Bambino.’’
The Cubs began playing at Wrigley Field in 1916 and have offered up more heartbreak than history within the ivy walls. But while Wrigley never has seen a Cubs player hold up a World Series trophy, that doesn’t mean that baseball history doesn’t reside there.
There are some undisputed facts about Ruth’s ‘‘called shot.’’
After hitting a home run earlier in the game, Ruth came up in the fifth inning with hostile words coming from the Cubs’ bench. There is footage of the Cubs riding Ruth to no end, especially after pitcher Charlie Root threw a called strike on the first pitch.
After the pitch, Ruth looked at the dugout and raised a finger, almost reminding the Cubs it was only one strike. Root then fell behind 2-1 before throwing a second called strike. The Cubs’ dugout — and the stands — erupted.
Ruth waved two fingers at the Cubs’ dugout, then started yelling at Root on the mound. It was at that point that he made a gesture. Was he pointing again at the Cubs’ dugout? Was he pointing at Root? Or was he pointing to center field and calling his shot?
Root’s next pitch was a curveball that Ruth hit what was estimated at the time to be about 440 feet to center field, near the flagpole. It since has been estimated as a 490-foot blast, considering where the flagpole was. But then the story really got interesting.
As Ruth rounded the bases, he mocked the Cubs’ dugout twice in what was an eventual 7-5 Yankees victory. The Yankees put the Cubs to rest the next day, completing the four-game sweep. But the ‘‘called shot’’ would be Ruth’s last World Series hit.
Only one article written on the day of the game mentioned that Ruth pointed to center field, and that was by a reporter named Joe Williams. But Williams never referred to it as Ruth calling his shot. Several days later, as more and more writers read Williams’ story, they began writing that Ruth had called his shot. It had taken on a life of its own.
And like a magician who never reveals his tricks, Ruth fed the beast, never coming out and saying it did or didn’t happen. All he said was, ‘‘Well, it was in the newspapers.’’
‘‘Babe Ruth’s ‘called shot’ ranks as high in baseball folklore as George Washington and the cherry tree ranks in our political folklore, and they have one thing in common: They probably didn’t happen,’’ Will said. ‘‘Babe Ruth never said he did it. He may have on his deathbed said that he didn’t do it, but he never claimed that he did it.
‘‘During that game, the Cubs’ dugout was all over him. Bench jockeys were a lot fiercer and meaner in those days, so there was a lot of back-and-forth. He could have been pointing to them. He was no doubt yelling at them because that was part of the ethic of the game then.
‘‘The fact is that we don’t know and we’re never going to know for sure — unless Charlie Root comes back and tells us something different. That was the pitcher that was 60 feet, 6 inches away from him at the time.’’
Root hasn’t come back to tell his side of the story, but his daughter, Della, did. In a documentary done in 2009, Della Root said Ruth wasn’t calling his shot.
‘‘The day before [my father] died,’’ Della said in the piece, ‘‘I was holding his hand, and he said, ‘You know, Della, I gave my life to baseball, and I will always be remembered for something that never happened.’ ’’
Oct. 1, 2012, will be the 80th anniversary of Ruth’s ‘‘called shot.’’ The way the Cubs are going, it’s safe to say it still will be the greatest moment in Wrigley Field’s history of home-team failure.
Was Ruth’s gesture actually the slugger calling his shot?
‘‘It’s a hell of a good story,’’ Will said with a smile.
One that baseball is better off keeping alive and well.
Did Babe Ruth really call his shot at Wrigley Field? - Chicago Sun-Times
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