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TheRealNews on Mar 15, 2011 Continue reading
Harvey Wasserman
Harvey Wasserman: Emergency at Onagawa nuclear plant, radiation 700 times over normal
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The Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant – a plant that cools by direct use of ocean water, not requiring a cooling tower. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
RussiaToday on Mar 13, 2011
Japan has declared an emergency alert at another nuclear power plant in the north-east of the country. Radiation levels of about 700 times higher than normal have reportedly been detected at the facility in Onagawa. Authorities are currently investigating their source. For more opinion on the threat of a nuclear crisis in Japan, RT talks to Harvey Wasserman, who’s written on the subject of a sustainable green-powered Earth.
Harvey Wasserman: Japan nuclear leak could bring apocalypse
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New post: March 13, 2011 Harvey Wasserman: Emergency at Onagawa nuclear plant, radiation 700 times over normal
New post: March 12, 2011 Explosion at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, at least 4 injured
Image by jksimpson via Flickr
RTAmerica on Mar 11, 2011
In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake, a nuclear reactor was fractured and radioactive material has been leaking into the atmosphere. Author Harvey Wasserman believes the radiation spewing into the air from the Japanese nuclear power plant could blow deep across western Asia and might even lead to the apocalypse.
Fighting the 5 fascisms in Wisconsin and Ohio by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
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Crossposted with permission from The Free Press.
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
February 21, 2011
The escalating confrontations in Wisconsin and Ohio are ultimately about preventing the United States from becoming a full-on fascist state.
The stakes could not be higher—or more clear.
As defined by its inventor, Benito Mussolini, fascism is “corporate control of the state.” There are ways to beat around the Bush—Paul Krugman has recently written about “oligarchy”—but it’s time to end all illusions and call what we now confront by its true name.
Nader Calls Obama’s Loan Guarantee for Nuclear Power Plants Monumental Mistake + Harvey Wasserman: A Bad Day for America
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by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
Feb. 18, 2010
President Obama’s support of loan guarantees for the construction of new nuclear power plants is a monumental mistake. It is a decision that is bad for consumers and taxpayers, and it is wrong-headed from an environmental and national security perspective.
Providing $8.3 billion in loan guarantees to help the Southern Company build two reactors in Georgia is the last thing the Obama Administration should be doing. There is no place for new nuclear power plants in our country’s energy future.
Facing the Bushes’ Iranian whirlwind by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman + Shots fired on an angry crowd
Crossposted with permission from The Free Press.
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
June 15, 2009
The parallels between the stolen Iranian election of 2009 and the American of 2000 and 2004 are tempting. The histories—and futures—of the two nations are inseparable. Bound up in their tortured half-century of crime and manipulation are the few glimmers of hope for lasting peace in the Middle East.
In both countries, a right-wing fundamentalist authoritarian with open contempt for human rights and the Geneva Convention has come up a winner, with catastrophic consequences. In both countries, the blowback of two George Bushes loom large. Continue reading
People died at Three Mile Island by Harvey Wasserman + Original CBS Report 3.30.79
Update: 3.27.09 added video link; see below
Crossposted with permission from The Free Press.
by Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
March 24, 2009
People died—and are still dying—at Three Mile Island.
As the thirtieth anniversary of America’s most infamous industrial accident approaches, we mourn the deaths that accompanied the biggest string of lies ever told in US industrial history.
As news of the accident poured into the global media, the public was assured there were no radiation releases.
Is this the end of the age of the automobile? by Harvey Wasserman
Crossposted with permission from The Free Press.
by Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
March 9, 2009
As a dominant form of transportation, the automobile is dead. So is GM, which now stands for Gone Mad.
But the larger picture says that the financial crisis now enveloping the world is grounded in the transition from the automobile—and the fossils that fuel it—to a brave renewable world of reborn mass transit and green power.
If GM lives in any form, it must be owned and operated by its workers and the public.
But the larger transition is epic and global, based on a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense.
Obama’s marijuana prohibition acid test by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
January 14, 2009
The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.
Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of many of the nation’s economic problems. It now costs the U.S. tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers who pose little, if any, harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested in the U.S. for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI’s uniform crime report.
Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1920 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, guards, prison contractors, and more.
[…]
via The Free Press — Independent News Media – Hemp Legalization.
see
Obama must learn from Kucinich’s election theft impeachment
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
http://www.freepress.org
June 11, 2008
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush. Two of the articles deal with the fact that Bush was never elected, and in fact stole the election of 2004 in Ohio. They should serve as a cautionary notice to the Obama campaign that this year’s election could also be stolen.
Kucinich’s courage in introducing these articles is underscored by the fact that the Congress should have removed Bush from office years ago. From lying to the world to perpetrate the war in Iraq, to violating the Constitution on scores of basic civil rights and liberties issues, to fostering a regime based on unprecedented corruption and robbery, George W. Bush would be known as the worst president in the history of the United States if in fact he had been elected president.
But these articles of impeachment contain charges that come directly from the independent reportage on the stolen 2004 election that appeared first at http://www.freepress.org and in other non-corporate and internet-based media throughout the United States. Ironically, though these facts have finally penetrated to a proposed Congressional indictment of the nation’s chief executive, they have yet to be reported in the “mainstream” corporate-owned media.
Kucinich’s Article 28 charges Bush with “tampering with free and fair elections,” along with “corruption of the administration of justice.” Article 29 charges him and his staff and political cronies and underlings with “conspiracy to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1965” (co-author Bob Fitrakis, attorney-at-law, helped draft these Articles 28 and 29 based in part on information that was first posted at http://www.freepress.org).
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment resolution + videos + transcript (including Art. 28-29)
Dennis Kucinich Documents Grounds for Impeachment of Bush & Cheney (4 hours)
Countdown: Articles of Impeachment + Off the Table + Economic Reality
Kucinich Reads Impeachment Articles 33, 18 + 20
Ralph Nader: Impeach Bush & Cheney!
Kucinich introduces articles of Impeachment (continued; videos; transcript)
Uranium Enrichment: The Bushes, The Saudis and The Bomb by Chris Floyd
by Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
Thursday, 29 May 2008
Did you hear the alarming story about a country led by draconian Muslim religious extremists acquiring enriched uranium for their nuclear plants — plants which could be weaponized anytime in the future, putting weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Sharia law fanatics who repress women, chop off heads and throttle all dissent? What’s more, they were given this weapons-grade material by a rogue nation led by a goonish tyrant who gained power only because he was the wastrel son of the former leader. Break out the regime change machinery right away; this evil must be stopped!
What’s that? No, we’re not talking about Iran getting souped-up nukestuff from North Korea. We’re talking about George W. Bush’s bestowal of enriched uranium on his pals and business partners, the Saudi royals, the most draconian religious tyrants in the world. Harvey Wasserman has the goods at Democracy Now:
You know, I’d like to know the insane asylum in which this policy was concocted. The idea of giving enriched uranium to the Saudis while threatening war with the Iranians for enriching uranium is astonishing. The idea that the Saudis are going to somehow lower the price of oil on the basis of possibly getting nuclear reactors in the future is just almost staggering to think about. It’s something, I guess, we’ve come to expect with the Bush administration.
…
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Bush Promises to Give Enriched Uranium to Saudi Arabia
Democracy Now!
May 20, 2008
As US Threatens Iran Over Enriching Uranium, Bush Promises to Give Enriched Uranium to Saudi Arabia
The Bush administration has pledged to support Saudi Arabia’s nuclear power program, including supplying enriched uranium for nuclear reactors. The agreement came out of President Bush’s visit to the Saudi kingdom last week, during which Bush also pledged new US assistance in guarding Saudi oil reserves.
Harvey Wasserman, one of the founders of the grassroots movement against nuclear power. He is senior editor of the Ohio-based freepress.org and the editor of nukefree.org.
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org
. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.
***
Bush promises Enriched Uranium to Saudis for cheap gas
Ohio’s voting machines are now an official crime scene
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
freepress.org
March 17, 2008
At least 15 touch-screen voting machines that produced improbable numbers in Ohio’s 2006 statewide election are now under double-lock in an official crime scene. And the phony “Homeland Security Alert” used by Republicans to build up George W. Bush’s 2004 vote count in a key southwestern Ohio county has come under new scrutiny.
The touch-screen machines were locked up after Ohio’s new Democratic Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, tried to vote last fall. On November 6, she spotted a gray bar with the words “candidate withdrawn” in a slot where the name of Democrat Jay Perez should have appeared. Her husband, voting nearby, told her Perez’s name did appear, as it was supposed to, on his machine.
Perez had been a candidate in the race for Franklin County Municipal Judge. He withdrew his name after the county had finalized its ballots. But it now appears the ES&S machines left his name on some machines but not on others. Perez, a Democrat, wanted to avoid playing a spoiler in the race. But the appearance of his name on some machines may have helped Republican David Tyack win.
Brunner now worries that the state will never find out what happened. County election officials ordered the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation to seize the machines. Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann is conducting an investigation that may cost the state $48,000. Brunner recently told WVKO 1580AM radio: “When you’re talking about democracy, it’s priceless.” In another interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Brunner noted “This is a huge problem. There is great concern that not every voter has the same ballot.”
Ironically, Brunner requested a paper ballot in the March 4, 2008, primary, but a poorly trained poll worker gave her a provisional ballot instead. Two other staffers from her office were also given the wrong ballots. Brunner has since pledged to upgrade the training for Buckeye State poll workers.
Brunner further announced that she’s banning the practice of so-called “sleepovers” where poll workers take the programmable and easily hackable voting machines home with them overnight prior to an election day.
Brunner succeeded Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell as Ohio’s Secretary of State. She has vowed to make sure the Buckeye State does not repeat the experience of 2004, when Blackwell choreographed the theft of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes for George W. Bush, giving him a second term in the White House. Since taking office Brunner has vowed to shift the entire state to voting on paper ballots, a move being fiercely resisted by numerous Republican-controlled Boards of Elections throughout the state. Thus far Brunner has forced the resignations of BOE chairs in two of Ohio’s most populous cities, Cleveland and Columbus.
Matt Damschroder was removed as Franklin County Board of Elections Director on the Sunday prior to Ohio’s 2008 primary election. Damschroder was previously suspended for a month without pay for accepting a $10,000 check from a voting machine salesman at the BOE building. The check, made out to the Republican Party, was delivered on the day the state’s contracts for electronic voting machines were open for bidding. Damschroder was former chair of the Franklin County Republican Party and the state’s leading foe of paper ballots. “Damschroder was very opposed to paper ballots and was stoking the fire against them,” Brunner told WVKO.
Dennis White, the new director of the Franklin County BOE was skeptical of the masking problem, but says if it happened, “it’s huge. We have a federal election coming up this November,” according to the Dispatch. White, who admits to having little knowledge of computers, is the former Ohio Democratic Party Chair.
That election may once again hinge on Ohio’s vote count. In 2006, Franklin County officials failed to conduct mandated tests on each machine, instead testing only one machine per precinct on a random bases. A report by SysTest Labs, a Colorado consulting firm, confirmed that what Brunner saw on her machine was “exactly what you’d see if someone masked a name,” the Dispatch reported.
Investigators also found that the “audit logs” on the voting machines were turned off by a board programmer in April, 2007, which has hindered investigators from reconstructing software changes. White says the vendor told a board employee how to disable the auditing system, allegedly to speed programming. Brunner said other vendors told her that “You’re never supposed to tell a (client) how to do that.”
In the primary this past March, the BOE allegedly did test all Franklin County’s machines. But some counties ran out of Democratic paper ballots as an influx of apparently Republican and Republican-leaning independents flooded the polls, apparently to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Enquirer has reported that a “casual conversation” between a “friendly” FBI agent and the county emergency services director in a parking lot may have contributed to the phony Homeland Security alert that prompted the Warren County BOE to lockdown the vote count in the 2004 election. The BOE declared the emergency and then moved the ballots from the publicly designated vote center to a nearby unauthorized warehouse. They also barred the public and media from witnessing the counting. Warren County, which is outside Cincinnati, then gave Bush 72% of the official vote count, far exceeding expectations. With neighboring Butler and Clermont Counties, Warren gave Bush a margin of 140,000 votes, which exceeded the 119,000 margin by which he allegedly won the election.
The Enquirer reports that “hundreds” of e-mailed complaints poured into the county BOE after the election, including one from an angry voter in the United Kingdom. “Stop destroying our democracy,” said one voter from South Carolina.
The Free Press has previously reported that Warren County BOE employees were told on the Thursday prior to the 2004 election day, that there would be a Homeland Security threat on election day. An examination of the ballots by a Free Press investigation team uncovered numerous irregularities in the Warren County vote that helped give Bush the presidency again.
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Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman co-authored HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and, with Steve Rosenfeld, WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO from New Press.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Ohio Secretary of State confirms 2004 election could have been stolen by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
The Free Press
December 14, 2007
Ohio’s Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that “critical security failures” are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, “could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.” They have rendered Ohio’s vote counts “vulnerable” to manipulation and theft by “fairly simple techniques.”
Indeed, she says, “the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant.”
In other words, Ohio’s top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen.
Brunner’s stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio’s 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.
Brunner is calling for widespread changes to the way Ohio casts and counts its ballots. Her announcement follows moves by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen to disqualify electronic voting machines in the nation’s biggest state.
In tandem, these two reports add a critical state-based dimension to the growing mountain of evidence that the US electoral system is rife with insecurities. Reports from the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee Task Force Report, Princeton University and others have offered differing perspectives that add up to the same conclusion.
Coming in the state that decided the 2004 election for George W. Bush, Brunner’s confirmation of the electoral system’s vulnerabilities adds huge new weight to the charge that the Buckeye State’s vote count was stolen.
In a series of investigative reports dating to well before the 2004 election, the Columbus Free Press and Freepress.org have documented several dozen different means used by the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign to steal the official 2004 vote count.
The final official tally for Bush—less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million cast—varied by 6.7% from exit poll results, which showed a Kerry victory. Exit polls in 2004 were designed to have a margin of error of about 1%.
In various polling stations in Democrat-rich inner city precincts in Youngstown and Columbus, voters who pushed touch screens for Kerry saw Bush’s name light up. A wide range of discrepancies on both electronic and paper balloting systems leaned almost uniformly toward the Bush camp. Voting procedures regularly broke down in inner city and campus areas known to be heavily Democratic.
In direct violation of standing federal election law, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties have since destroyed all or part of their 2004 election data. The materials were additionally protected by a federal court injunction in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit (in which we are attorney and plaintiff). To date, no state or federal prosecutions have resulted from this wholesale destruction of presidential election records, including 1.6 million ballots, cast and uncast, needed for definitive auditing procedures. However, two Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) election officials have been convicted of felony manipulation of an official recount. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the state’s largest newspaper, recently editorialized that there is “no evidence” the 2004 election was stolen, but omitted mention of the destruction of the electoral records by more than half the counties in the state. The Plain-Dealer and other mainstream media have consistently ignored findings by the Free Press and others indicating widespread manipulation and theft of the kind Brunner has now confirmed was eminently do-able within the Ohio system.
Brunner says “the results underscore the need for a fundamental change in the structure of Ohio’s election system to ensure ballot and voting system security while still making voting convenient and accessible to all Ohio voters.” Among other things, she advocates replacing touch-screen machines with optical-scan units that include a paper balloting system.
The study was managed by the Battelle Corporation, and conducted by Columbus-based MicroSolved Inc., SysTest Labs of Denver along with a consortium of academic subcontractors. It was reviewed by a dozen county officials, and included scrutiny of voting systems produced by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Hart Intercivic and Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold).
Brunner is the Democratic successor to Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell, who administered the 2004 election as Secretary of State while also serving as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. The report comes as part of her pledge to guarantee a fair and reliable vote count in the upcoming 2008 presidential election.
Under Blackwell, Ohio spent some $100 million installing electronic voting machines as part of the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the scandals surrounding the 2000 election. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, HAVA’s principle author, now resides in a federal prison, in part for illegalities surrounding his dealings with voting machine companies.
Blackwell, who was defeated in a 2006 race for the Ohio governorship, outsourced web hosting responsibilities for the 2004 vote count to a programming firm that also programmed the web site for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Blackwell’s chosen host site for the state’s vote count was in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the servers for the Republican National Committee, and the Bush White House, were also located.
Brunner has now recommended that all Ohio’s voting be done on optical scan ballots, with reliance on central tabulation. Voters with disabilities could use AutoMark machines with bar coding devices that allow the marking of ballots with little or no additional assistance.
“It’s a testament to our state’s boards of elections officials that elections on the new (federally) mandated voting systems have gone as smoothly as they have in light of these findings,” Brunner said.
Conversely, it is also a testament to the ease with which the 2004 election was stolen by election officials who had clear conflicts of interest aimed at keeping George W. Bush in the White House.
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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (The New Press) with Steve Rosenfeld. THE FITRAKIS FILES are available at http://www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Do the Neo-Cons Need Karl Rove When They Can Count on the Democrats? By Harvey Wasserman
Dandelion Salad
By Harvey Wasserman
08/16/07 “ICH“
Karl Rove scoots off the sunken White House ship with his plans for future neo-con dominance safe and secure—in the hands of Democrats unwilling or incapable of challenging his dirtiest deeds.
Elected to end a lunatic war, the Democratic Congress has prolonged it, earning approval ratings even lower than those of George W. Bush, whom Rove designated as a “war president” long before the attack on Iraq.
The Democrats have also signed off on the GOP’s all-out assault on the Constitution, meekly certifying a “unitary executive” with totalitarian demands for a blanket suspension of civil liberties, arbitrary detention, official torture and more.
Once again voters will approach a presidential election asking themselves—why vote for Democrats who won’t challenge the most catastrophic GOP outrages?
That question must now be asked again about the illegal destruction of 1.5 million ballots from Ohio’s stolen 2004 election. The mass shredding includes a wide range of official documents critical to conducting a valid recount in the state that gave Bush/Rove a second term in the White House.
Breaking a total mainstream media blackout, the Cincinnati Enquirer has finally printed a front-page story on the felonious disposal of these federally-protected records by 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
The records were shielded until September 2, 2006 by federal mandate, and since then by a federal court order obtained through a class action lawsuit. The counties were also required to inform the Ohio Historical Society before any such records were destroyed.
The counties have responded to critics with an absurd array of “dog ate my homework” excuses reminiscent of Rove’s laptop during his lighter moments. Some of the ballots were ruined by a coffee pot, says one county. Flooding hit others, they say. In one county, recyclers were to blame. In another, counterfeit ballots have been discovered.
In short, the excuses for destroying Ohio’s election records are every bit as credible as Rove saying he’s resigning to “spend more time with my family.”
But far from reacting with outrage, the Democrats have merely shrugged, much as they’ve done with the continuation of the Iraq War and the shredding of the Constitution.
Ohio’s Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has told the media she sees “no evidence” this mass deep-sixing of official records was done “purposefully” by nearly two-thirds of the state’s counties.
By contrast, under Republican Governor Jeb Bush, only one Florida county destroyed its records and ballots from the 2000 election. The rest of the materials are safely on file at a repository in Tallahassee. A thorough media-sponsored investigation used them to conclude that Al Gore was the rightful winner.
While campaigning in 2006, Brunner promised to establish a similar facility in Columbus. Riding a huge popular revulsion against incumbent Republicans, she won in a landslide that also ushered in a Democratic governor, attorney-general and U.S. Senator.
But except for Freepress.org, no independent team has conducted a systematic analysis of Ohio’s 2004 election. Our conclusion remains that John Kerry was the rightful winner. Evidence continuing to surface has deepened that conviction.
As part of the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville lawsuit that secured a federal court mandate for the protection of these materials, it was our expectation that the Freepress.org and other media teams would have time to access those preserved materials for a definitive, ultimately conclusive study.
In a new reality emblematic of the Age of Rove, that will now be impossible.
By all rights, the staff and election boards of all the 56 counties should be subject to investigation and possible federal and state felony charges.
Emblematic of the Democratic Party in the Age of Rove, there seems no movement in that direction.
In the wake of the destruction of these historic materials, Brunner has also told the media she sees “no evidence” that Kerry could have won the 2004 election.
But Bush’s official margin was less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million counted, with exit polls showing him the clear winner. More than 100,000 ballots remain uncounted. The litany of ballot stuffing, electronic manipulation, voter intimidation and fraud has now been overshadowed by the illegal destruction of 1.5 million votes cast in precincts that had inflated totals for Bush, according to exit polls. Essential auditing materials were destroyed in the key Republican counties that gave Bush his official margin of victory. In at least one of those counties, counterfeit ballots have surfaced in large numbers.
The Democrats also don’t seem to care that the servers used to compute the Ohio 2004 vote count were the same ones that housed the web site for the Republican National Committee.
Those servers (which were lodged in the basement of a bank in Chattanooga, Tennessee) mysteriously “malfunctioned” during a critical period in the deep night of the election when a 200,000-vote exit poll margin for John Kerry somehow morphed into a victory for Bush/Rove. Rove’s notoriously missing “extra-official” e-mails flowed through those same servers.
Congressional Democrats now pursue Rove over the firing of federal attorneys who refused to play along with the GOP plan to disenfranchise millions of American voters in the lead-up to 2008. But Bush is certain to shield Rove with a pardon, and the matter seems as likely to fade away as those 2004 ballots.
The fifteen months until the 2008 election can qualify as many lifetimes in American politics. Unless the Democrats confront this horrendous war and stop the obliteration of the American Constitution, they’ll give voters little reason to bother coming out for them in 2008.
And unless they face the realities of the last two stolen presidential elections, Karl Rove’s twisted vision for a neo-con America could easily survive the loss of the presidency to a nominal Democrat in 2008, just as it thrives unimpeded after the 2006 loss of Congress and the Ohio statehouse.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at http://www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for http://www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
© 2007 The Free Press
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. This material is distributed without profit.
Dandelion Salad 