Blogs

  Eye in the Sky Spying on Americans

by Stephen Lendman

Money power runs America. So do lobbies representing all corporate and other interests.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) represents dozens of influential companies.

  BBC: Caught in the Act

by Stephen Lendman

On February 11, the London Independent headlined, "BBC to issue global apology for documentaries that broke rules," saying:

To the Charlottesville Daily Progress

  Iran's Historic Anniversary

by Stephen Lendman

February 11 marked the 33rd anniversary of Iran's 1979 revolution. It ended a generation of repressive rule under Washington's installed Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In late 1947, Iran demanded more revenue from its own oil. Britain's Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AOIC) refused.

The Independent just announced that British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) would be running an apology worldwide for airing documentaries produced by a public relations firm.  The anticipated apology resulted from last year's reporting in The Independent on this pecuiar BBC practice.  A special committee investigated and confirmed the news fixing process.

"The BBC will today apologise to an estimated 74 million people around the world for a news fixing scandal, exposed by The Independent, in which it broadcast documentaries made by a London TV company that was earning millions of pounds from PR clients which it featured in its programming."  The Independent, Feb 11

Sweet!  The PR firm got a big payday from its clients, the nation of Malaysia for example, to produce the client-friendly documentaries.  Then, the firm sold the documentaries to BBC for a nominal fee.  The client state gets the publicity it wants, packaged for maximum effect, and BBC gets low cost content.

  Khader Adnan's Heroic Struggle for Justice

by Stephen Lendman

Saturday marked his 56th hunger striking day. "My dignity is more precious than food," he said. He's willing to die courageously defending it.

He's protesting his lawless detention and treatment by repressive Israeli prison authorities. They're committing willful, malicious slow-motion murder.

  NATO's Secret War on Syria

by Stephen Lendman

In January, Michel Chossudovsky reported British media confirming UK/CIA/MI6 operatives in Syria training anti-Assad Western-backed insurgents. They're also supplying them with arms, ammunition, and equipment.

  America's Sham Economic Recovery

by Stephen Lendman

Official government data are manipulated. Credibility's entirely lacking. Reported good news is hype. Grim underlying reality is suppressed.

By Dan DeWalt

Entergy Nuclear of Louisiana, which operates the Vermont Yankee (VY) nuclear reactor in Vernon Vermont has launched an attack on the state of Vermont with the help of the federal courts.

Vermont state law gives the state the power to decide whether to allow further operation of the reactor past March 21, 2012 (the expiration date for VY). When Entergy bought VY, they agreed to this law and swore that they would not try to abrogate it. This was an outright lie on Entergy's part, and they sued the state as soon as it was decided that further operation of this crumbling, leaking and led-by-liars reactor would NOT be in the interests of the state and they were not given permission to continue operation past March 21.

Imagine that your son, your darling little boy, was killed during the past eight years in a war that served purely to kill a whole lot of Iraqis and enrich a small number of billionaires, while causing horrible environmental damage, stripping away our civil liberties, and poisoning foreign relations elsewhere.  And imagine that, instead of avoiding this reality or lying about it, you confronted it.  Further, imagine that you became so famous confronting it, that everybody wanted to be your friend, at least for a minute. You might even get invited to Venezuela by President Hugo Chavez, and you might go with a mind open to hearing what he had to say.

Cindy Sheehan did.  And now she's published a book about it.  If Venezuela makes it to the top of the list for the next U.S. war, this book will be a valuable tool for confronting the propaganda.  But why wait?  Our government has attempted a coup and is openly funding opposition groups.  Why wait to consider what it is we're paying to try to undo?

Venezuela could be targeted for its oil, of course.  But Cindy proposes another reason why the government in Washington, D.C., that we all so love to hate except when it kills lots of people, might be targeting Venezuela.  In an interview included in the book, she asks Chavez: "Why do you think the Empire makes such a concerted effort to demonize you?"  His response, which has been translated from Spanish, is:

"I think for different reasons. But I've gotten to the conclusion there is one particular strong reason, a big reason. They are afraid, the Empire is afraid.  The Empire is afraid that the people of the United States might find out about the truth, they are afraid that something like that could erupt in their own territory -- a Bolivarian movement; or a Lincoln movement -- a movement of citizens, conscious citizens to transform the system. . . . So, why do they demonize us? They know -- those who direct the Empire -- they know the truth. But they fear the truth. They fear the contagious effect. They fear a revolution in the United States. They fear an awakening of the people in the United States. And so that's why they do everything they can. And they achieve it, relatively, that a lot of sectors in the United States see us as devils. No one wants to copy the devil."

But we might copy some little things even from the devil if they were worth copying.  What is it that Sheehan and Chavez think might be contagious if we found out about it? 

This is why the book is a valuable resource now, threat or no threat, war or no war.  It's a story of a people's movement, largely nonviolent.  It's a story of dramatic change that was slow in coming and then burst into fruition.  It's a story of a work in progress that is moving in positive directions, investing in education, protecting the environment, raising the living standards of the majority of the people.  Can a new political party succeed?  Yes, it can.  Can an outworn Constitution be rewritten at great length and well by a popular movement?  Yes, it can. (PDF). Cindy lists some of the changes brought by this Constitution:

·      added a "people's branch"
·      added an "election's branch"
·      citizens are able to recall the president
·      health care is enshrined as a human right
·      education is enshrined as a human right
·      gender inclusivity in the language
·      equal rights for women under the law
·      only the people can amend the document
·      aggressive indigenous rights
·      commits the power of the state to protect the environment

The horror!  I know some USians who don't dare HOPE for such a CHANGE. I even know some who are learning that such changes are perfectly possible, but that they don't come about through hoping, or through voting alone. 

The weakness of the Venezuelan revolution, however, is very similar to the weakness of US liberalism.  Each pins its hopes on a single messiah.  Of course, Chavez is making the poor richer, while Obama is making the rich richer.  But it appears entirely possible that positive movement in Venezuela will be thrown into reverse when Chavez dies.  Chavez ought to be teaching his nation not to depend on one man.  He ought to step down while alive and well enough to help guide his successor.  He ought to move on to a focus on uniting the nations of South America.  That he does not do this seems to me a mark against his character.  But it does not change the fact that the Venezuelan people have been empowered to rule by referendum, while in the United States the presidency has been made more powerful than that of Venezuela -- and without the addition of direct democracy.  The Venezuelan Constitution has already been amended, by public referendum.  The U.S. Constitution hasn't been touched in 40 years except through dramatic changes imposed by the Supreme Court or the President.

The question that my mind focuses on in reading Cindy's account is not, however, what can I find wrong with Chavez.  It's this: Can we make an Occupy movement worthy of the title Bolivarian?

By Yasmeen Ali

Pakistan parliamentarians should promptly table a resolution calling for efforts to carve the state of New Mexico away from the United States and to either make it independent, or restore it to its status prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-48), when it was a part of Mexico. 

  Duplicitous Mortgage Settlement Deal

by Stephen Lendman

What major media scoundrels call relief is, in fact, business as usual coverup and fraud. Ellen Brown's important writing explained.

  Murdering Khader Adnan

by Stephen Lendman

Adnan's a political prisoner hunger striker against gross Israeli repression and injustice. Two previous articles discussed his case and grave health condition after 55 days without food.

There's no question that some people in Washington would very much like for the U.S. to have a policy towards Iran whose endgame is war or externally-induced regime change. And they have a long-term strategy to bring this about, which is to block efforts at meaningful diplomacy, so that the only thing left on the table is war or externally-induced regime change.

Now, according to reports from DC, come Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham with a new bill. What does their bill seek to do? According to reports from people who have seen the draft bill, in its current form it seeks to block the President from having a policy to "contain" Iran if it develops nuclear weapons capability.

Jasmin Ramsey wrote Wednesday at LobeLog:

Let's approximate (and let's go high) that the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has 2,000 direct and contracted (it won't say how many contracted, so we have to guess) employees working for under $13 per hour as demanded by the Living Wage campaign.  And let's imagine they work on average 40 hours per week and 50 weeks a year, and let's imagine they earn the bare legal mimimum of $7.25 per hour.  That would mean that it would take $23 million to make things right, to allow fulltime workers to pay their bills, quit their second jobs, see their families, and take care of their health.

Who has $23 million?

It turns out that UVA has got $4.76 BILLION.

I hate to have to point this out, but $23 million is less than a half a percent of $4.76 billion.  (If my math is off that's UVA's fault too! :-)

If you earn $50,000 a year, do you ever give $200 or so to good causes?  UVA isn't being asked to do that.  It's being asked to pay people a decent humane wage for their hard work.

There's little less honorable than greed.  Doesn't UVA have an honor code?

After publishing this report I was contacted by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).  The individual involved never returned my call.  Instead I heard from Brian Hale who said he had been with Director Morton at the event recently held at the University of Virginia and discussed in my report.  He told me that ICE in fact had nothing to do with contacting activists, that in fact Ed Ryan (who had contacted local residents from an ICE email address) actually worked for Federal Protective Services which used to fall under ICE and still has some ICE email addresses.  I asked Hale, regardless of department, why any branch of Homeland Security was using our money to contact us in a manner that intimidated people out of exercising their First Amendment rights.  Hale told me to ask Federal Protective Services (FPS).

I reached Rob Winchester at FPS.  I asked him about the January 20th MovetoAmend.org "Occupy the Courts" events held here in Charlottesville, Va., and around the country.  He said that FPS inspectors had tried to facilitate events in order to get them permitted and make them legal.  Some of the events, he said, were on federal property.  The intent had been dialogue and not intimidation.  If people were intimidated, he said, he apologized for that.

I told Winchester that the street corner where the Charlottesville event was held is routinely used for demonstrations without permits or authorizations beyond the First Amendment, and that we have never had a problem, but that the FPS contacts instructing people to inform authorities of their plans by certain deadlines and so forth had in fact intimidated people out of exercising their rights. 

Winchester replied that at one location elsewhere in the country some people had "been pushing against the barricades."  I didn't ask what the barricades were doing there.  In another location, he said, "our folks were laughing and joking with the people there."  Mine was the first report of any intimidation, he said.

I pointed out that people who are intimidated by FPS contact do not phone in to the FPS to report that they feel intimidated.  Winchester said that he understood and would pass this along as "lessons learned."  I thanked him for his apology and for understanding.  But this is clearly a work in progress.  Many would like to be free to hold rallies without the presence of a militarized federal force, regardless of whether that force is joking and laughing with us.  Many would like to be left alone to exercise their First Amendment rights undisturbed rather than fund Big Brother to the tune of $75 billion per year, no matter how benevolent the intentions.  The problem is not Ryan or Winchester but the system they have made themselves a part of.

My advice to intimidated activists is to not leave me the only person phoning in to complain.  Phone in.  Phone every day.  Ask for a meeting to discuss the problem.  Call 202-282-8000.

This reply to Hedges and defense of violence completely fails to persuade.

The primary argument seems to be that if you are not in Oakland and familiar with every detail you shalt not offer your advice.  But knowing whether the person who smashed a window was wearing a mask or not hardly eliminates the possibility of usefully commenting on whether it helped or hurt to smash that window.  The defense article describes violent clashes with police and concludes "No one can agree on who attacked first." So, even being there results in important ignorance.  But in a movement publicly and convincingly committed to nonviolence we would all know who attacked first.  It would have to have been the police.  In fact, there would be no "attacked first" but simply "attacked."  In a movement hollowed out by acceptance of "diversity of tactics" (as euphemism for violence) nobody could ever be sure, even if we had witnesses and videos.  Quoting MLK in arguing against what he so persuasively denounced every day for years is a new low.

  Act Up Against ACTA

by Stephen Lendman

ACTA's worse than SOPA and PIPA. Net Neutrality and free expression are threatened. In October 2007, negotiations began secretly. 

  Gaza: Isolated Under Siege

by Stephen Lendman

Under repressive occupation, Military Orders govern virtually all aspects of life. Freedom is entirely restricted. Police state authority runs Palestine.

Although Oslo called Palestine one territorial unit, Israel maintains total control of people and goods movement in and out of Gaza.

It may have been the one and only thing which prevented an attack on Iran during the Bush years. Chairman of the Judiciary Committee John Conyers spent years fending off nationwide calls to impeach George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq, the shredding of the Constitution after 9/11, and other high crimes and misdemeanors culminating in a summer of 2008 "non-impeachment impeachment hearings," in which witnesses such as Rep. Brad Miller, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, Vincent Bugliosi and many others came together to implore the committee to bring articles of impeachment.

By Douglas A. Berg

Nancy Goodman Brinker, a pioneer of “cause marketing”, founded Susan G. Komen For the Cure in 1982, reportedly as the fulfillment of a deathbed promise made to her sister, a victim of breast cancer. In 1994, Brinker founded In Your Corner, Inc., a for-profit company that markets health products and information. In 1998, Brinker sold In Your Corner to AstraZeneca, the third largest pesticide manufacturer in the world, primarily through Syngenta, a giant global agribusiness company it owns jointly with Novartis.

A poll published on Wednesday at the Washington Post finds that a majority of even "liberal Democrats" approves of Obama killing US citizens.  Of course, this would almost certainly be different if Obama were a Republican. 

What if an organization with money but no partisanship (are there some?) were to commission a poll from a pollster willing to face a firestorm of attacks from the political parties (are there any such pollsters?), a poll that would ask people all their demographic info, including politics and party identification if any, and ask some of them:

If President Obama had to kill a US citizen to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?

If President Obama had to imprison a US citizen with no trial to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?

If President Obama had to launch a war without congressional authorization in order to protect the nation, based purely on the word of the President, would you approve?

If President Obama determined it to be necessary to deploy a nuclear bomb and did so, would you approve?

The poll would ask those questions of a large enough sample to be well represented in each demographic category.  Then a similar sample would be asked the  same questions with Romney substituted for Obama.  Then others would be asked the questions about a President Santorum, and others with Gingrich. 

The results would almost certainly show that many in the United States do indeed place loyalty to political parties or elected officials above matters of life and death -- at least the lives and deaths of others.

This would, of course, be shameful, and if it made it into the corporate news it would make all types of partisanship look bad.  It might, very likely, however, make one brand of partisanship look worst.  I would predict that Republicans would each be highly approving of these abuses by at least one Republican candidate, and that their approval would diminish for the others, and especially for Obama.  Democrats, I expect, would be less approving, but still strongly approving in the case of Obama, but that there would be a particularly significant drop off in approval by Democrats of such crimes if committed by any of the Republicans. 

What pollster would be willing to test these assumptions?

Of course, in reality there is such a thing as being too late.  Opposing abuses when Bush is president, but limiting the opposition at the behest of the Democratic Party, was followed by support for Obama's protection of and continuation and expansion of the crimes.  Now shady Bush policies have become open "legal" practice.  It is too late to take them back from the next Republican president, or any president, without fundamental change to our government.  If we continue down the current path, eventually the partisanship will retreat on this issue and supporters of presidential murder will tend to support it by any president and to imagine that no alternative to that exists.

By Linn Washington, Jr.

Ask journalists across America what is the seminal U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the First Amendment’s press freedom right and most with even a minimal knowledge of First Amendment history will quickly answer New York Times vs. Sullivan.

However, few journalists are aware that the Supreme Court decision significantly reinforcing their press freedom protections arose from the Civil Rights Movement, and in an action involving iconic activist Dr. Martin Luther King.

The 1964 New York Times vs. Sullivan decision is one of a number of U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the Twentieth Century where struggles by African-Americans to obtain long-denied constitutional rights succeeded in expanding constitutional protections for all Americans.

John Morton, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spoke on Monday at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Here's the University's report.  Here's the local newspaper's. Both report only on what Morton said, without mentioning what he was asked about by members of the audience following his opening remarks. 

He could have been asked about record breaking deportations and the recklessness that has deported U.S. citizens.  Perhaps he was. I wasn't there.  But Erin Rose, who was there, sent this report:

"Last night I got up the nerve to go confront the director of ICE, John Morton, where he was giving a lecture on the duties and achievements of ICE at the University of Virginia Law School. I went with Nancy, who is a very gutsy woman and really inspires me. We listened while the director spent one hour explaining what his department does. Besides undocumented people, they also deal with child abusers. (I didn't understand that connection.) He told us that since the beginning of his tenure the death rate among ICE prisoners has gone down from dozens a year to less than 10 a year.  (Were we supposed to clap?)  He also said that incarceration has gone up 50% since he got there. They contract with private corporations and the taxpayer pays the bill. He also said the system needs to be entirely redone, revamped. He gave absolutely no indication what would be necessary or even why....

"... When it was time for questions, Nancy stood up and introduced herself as not a lawyer or a child molester, but just a common citizen who would like to know why ICE considers American citizens who are just disagreeing with their government in a open, planned, peaceful, democratic demonstration, their purview? She referred to our protest against Citizens United [held on January 20th in Charlottesville] and told him that many organizers across the country had been intercepted before the event and monitored during the event by special agents of ICE. He answered that he had no knowledge of it, immediately dismissed it, and went on to the next question.

"So I raised my hand, stood up and told him that I was one of those organizers and that I know of many others -- dozens -- who were contacted and questioned. I asked him how he doesn't know the functions of his own department? When he continued to deny any knowledge of this, I turned to the gentile and learned audience and told them that even though he is not telling them, they should know that this department, which was ostensibly set up to deal with immigration control of foreigners, is now concerning itself with local American citizens that dare to disagree with their government. And that even more disturbing, they are not admitting to this. I stressed that this concerns them and this is what they need to know from this lecture. I then walked out. I was chased by a strange man who caught me just as I left the building, wanting to know what organization I was from. When I asked him what he was doing there, he was vague. Again, he pressed me for information but I blew him off and left quickly. Nancy, who stayed til the end, later told me that she was also approached by this man, who seemed to want to learn as much as he could about us. I went home feeling sick to my stomach and quite depressed. I had expected an explanation in answer to my question, certainly a justification- but not a complete denial. How do you explain this?"

Now, I was the speaker at the January 20th event, and I never heard anything from ICE -- and that always seems to be the case and always leaves me very skeptical.  So I asked Erin for more information, and she sent me this email that she had received:

Ryan, Edward A <aryan@ice.dhs.gov> wrote:
From: Ryan, Edward A <aryan@ice.dhs.gov>
Subject: January 20, 2012 - Occupy the Courts
To: [Erin and 13 other people.-DS]
Date: Monday, January 23, 2012, 5:32 AM

    To all,

    You were previously identified as an Organizer or part of the planning process for the January 20, 2012, “Occupy the Courts” movement. Federal Protective Service representatives reached out to you before hand to attempt to assist in your planning of the event and facilitate any permitting required and coordinate and provide information regarding any additional entities you might have had to contact.

    As this event is now over, we are always trying to improve in our outreach program. I am asking that by the close of business, January 25, 2012, you provide me with any feedback you can as well as answer the few questions posed below.

    Question 1:

    Were you satisfied in the information that was provided to you during the initial contact by Federal Protective Service representatives?

    Question 2:

    Was the Federal Protective Service able to assist you in your planning process?

    Question 3:

    On the day of your event, were the Federal Protective Service Officers courteous, respectful and helpful?

    Question 4:

    In your opinion, is there anything we could have done better?

    I thank you for your time and the Federal Protective Service looks forward to working with you again.

    Ed Ryan
    Special Agent
    U.S. Department of Homeland Security
    Federal Protective Service
    (215) 521-2146  Office
    (215) 521-2169  Fax
    edryan@dhs.gov

The event in question was held, as planned and publicly announced, on a street corner in front of a federal court house.  The same location has been used for a peace rally every Thursday afternoon for many years without incident or interference.  During the event, four uniformed "officers" of some sort were visible inside the glass front of the building, watching us.  To my knowledge, they never emerged, and we never entered.  Whether they had any colleagues there without uniforms I couldn't say for sure.

Erin has expressed her concern thus:

"If the stated mission of ICE is to 'uphold public safety by enforcing immigration and customs laws,'  what does ICE  have to do with us, a group of legal American citizens peacefully assembling in our home town? Doesn't that seem weird? I mean, I realize ICE is under the umbrella of Homeland Security -- although I think even the overlap between these two is strange.  However, if these two departments have something in common, it is that they were both set up to deal with foreign and covert threats.  Homeland Security was ostensibly set up to counteract terrorism. Terrorists do not announce their protests by posting flyers all over town. Terrorists do not wave colorful signs to get attention. Just how are two government departments, which were supposedly set up to deal with foreign, covert threats, now concerning themselves with we, the people?"

These seemed like reasonable questions, so I phoned up Ed Ryan to ask him.  I left a voice message at 11:50 a.m. on Wednesday.  I'm still waiting for his helpful call. 

The event in Charlottesville was one of dozens all over the country on January 20th organized by MovetoAmend.org, and reports from elsewhere are that the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Marshalls were very eager to "facilitate" rallies planned in front of court houses.  Concerns about this that have been communicated to me include that it helps to habituate us to accepting official and authoritarian intrusion, inspection, and approval of our decisions to exercise our First Amendment rights, and that it intimidates some people who then choose not to take part in public events at all.  I've seen both of those reactions first-hand.

We're spending $75 billion a year above and beyond the wars and above and beyond the "Defense Department" in order to establish a department focused on "the Homeland," since the "Defense Department" is obviously defending something else entirely.  The result has not just been grotesque profiteering, guarding cows, arming police for war, harassing minorities, and so forth.  It has also been employing people like Ed Ryan to make sure that my friends know Big Brother is watching them when they dare to hold up a poster proclaiming the rights of people over those of corporations. 

Does this seem like good money spent to you?  What if the Homeland really was insecure?  I'm still waiting for the relevant bureaucracy to return my call.

  Targeting Syria and Iran

by Stephen Lendman

Slowed but not derailed by Russia and China vetoing its Security Council resolution, America's regime change/war plans remain on track.

In 1999, Washington circumvented the Security Council, UN Charter, and US Constitution to wage aggressive war against nonbelligerent Serbia/Kosovo.

  Economic Recovery? What Recovery?

by Stephen Lendman

Reporting it doesn't make it so. In fact, it's more illusion than fact, but that doesn't surprise half of US households impoverished or bordering on it, according to recent US Census data.

For progressives and populists around the country who take an interest in Congressional races there are always a few good challengers we might hope to send to Washington.  Incumbents, we assume, can take care of themselves. 

But in Northern Ohio, redistricting has thrown two incumbents into one district.  It's a heavily Democratic district created purposely to guarantee a number of other districts to Republicans.  The incumbents are both Democrats, both white, both 65, and many imagine that they do similar work in Washington.  In fact, they could not be more different.  One of them does tremendous good for our national politics, working to move our government in a better direction from inside it, just as the rest of us do from the outside.  We cannot afford to lose him.  We would be obliged to work for his reelection even if his opponent were far above average.  The record suggests something else.

A useful example to highlight the contrast between Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur is found in the funding of wars.  Between 2001 and 2009, Congresswoman Kaptur voted for $545 billion in war funding, voting Yes over and over again for Bush's wars.  Congressman Dennis Kucinich voted for a total of $17 billion. (See the chart below.) 

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Kucinich's was the clearest voice against it.  He circulated evidence of war lies to his colleagues.  He organized many of them to vote No with him.  Kaptur, too, voted No on the authorization.

But once the war had started, many Congress members, including Kaptur, turned around and voted to fund its continuation and escalation, year after year, even as the public turned more and more strongly against the war.  While Kucinich was working to impeach Bush and Cheney, Kaptur was voting to fund their wars.  While Kucinich was advancing resolutions to shift the debate toward ending wars and preventing new ones, Kaptur was claiming wars made us safer and reciting "support the troops" rhetoric, as though what veterans need most is the creation of more injured veterans. 

This distinction matters more than ever as the prospect of a war on Iran looms larger.  Kaptur wants NASA and the Pentagon to work together more closely, while Kucinich opposes the militarization of space.  Kaptur seems to believe the military industrial complex is a beneficial jobs program, whereas Kucinich seems to believe it is what Eisenhower said it would be.

Congresswoman Kaptur has been spending a lot of money on television ads in hopes of defeating Kucinich in the upcoming primary.  Where does her money come from?  Well, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org), in the current election cycle, she gets 77% of her money from PACs, and 5% from small individual contributors.  Kucinich, in contrast, gets 5% from PACs, and 68% from small individual contributors.  Kucinich does not get money from war contractors.  Kaptur is a different story.  Thus far, in the current election cycle, her fourth biggest "contributor" is a little operation known as General Dynamics.  Her third biggest is Teledyne Technologies.  Tied for seventh place are American Systems Corp and Northrop Grumman.  Tied at 16^th are Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  Most of these corporations have been among Kaptur's regular funders in past campaigns as well.  They are also among the leading violators of U.S. laws. 

According to the Federal Contractor Misconduct Database (ContractorMisconduct.org), these are the worst four offenders from any industry:

Contractor                           Federal Contract $       Instances of Misconduct        Misconduct $
                                                     (FY2010)                          (Since 1995)                        (Since 1995)

1. Lockheed Martin                      $34367.4m                           57                                       $590.1m

2. Boeing Company                     $19366.6m                            43                                       $1600.5m

3. Northrop Grumman                   $15522.7m                          35                                       $850.7m

4. General Dynamics                  $14908.8m                             13                                        $78.5m

Among the types of misconduct engaged in by these four leaders, as detailed at the above database, are the following: contract fraud, kickbacks, defective pricing, unlicensed exports, emissions violations, groundwater cleanup violations, inflated costs, providing of bribes and sexual favors, nuclear safety violations, nuclear waste storage violations, federal election law violations, radiation exposure, illegal transfer of information to China, violations of the National Labor Relations Act, embezzlement, racial discrimination and retaliation, age discrimination and retaliation, unauthorized weapons sales to foreign nations, retaliation against whistleblowers.  And that's just Lockheed.  In fact, that's just a small sampling of just Lockheed.  Why take money from these companies?

According to the National Priorities Project (CostOfWar.com) Kaptur's Ninth District of Ohio (prior to redistricting) has shelled out over $3.1 billion for wars since 2001.  That expense has been with Kaptur's full cooperation.  And that is an expense measured purely in dollars taken from tax payers to pay for wars.  It does not include further costs for veterans' care, for interest on war debt, for increased fuel prices, or for lost opportunities.  Nor does it include the cost already extracted of several times the $3.1 billion for a base annual military budget that has roughly doubled this decade and done so on the basis of the wars. 

According to a report titled "The U.S. Employment Effects of Military And Domestic Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis," (PDF) by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, (October 2009), spending the same dollars on the military (without specifying war spending which would likely make the contrast even greater) produces many fewer jobs than if spent in other industries.  If Ohio's Ninth District's $3.1 billion had been spent on tax cuts for working people, instead of on the military, the people of the Ninth District could have seen a net gain of 9,920 jobs.  That's considering the full impact of jobs lost, directly created, and indirectly created.  Military spending, purely in terms of job creation, is worse than nothing.  Tax cuts -- not for Mitt Romney but for the rest of us -- does more good.

But the same study also shows a better path.  If the $3.1 billion had been taken away from the military and spent instead on clean energy, we would have seen a net gain of 17,050 jobs.  If instead the investment had gone to healthcare, the net gain would have been 24,000 jobs.  And if the choice had been to fund education, the gain in jobs would have been 54,250.  Could Ohio's Ninth District use 54,250 jobs?  Not many people would choose to chase those jobs away in order to support wars based on lies, wars that endanger us, wars that devastate the natural environment, wars that erode our civil liberties, wars that carry a heavy human cost -- not just an economic one.  Not many people, but one of them is Marcy Kaptur.

If you visit Kaptur's campaign website at MarcyKaptur.com, only one specific issue is immediately visible, front and center: celebration of a World War II memorial.  At Kucinich.us there is also only a single issue immediately visible: a petition urging the Congressman's colleagues to stop funding the war in Afghanistan.  In the "Agenda" section of Kaptur's site there is no acknowledgement that war or peace is an issue to be considered at all.  In the "Issues" section of Kucinich's site, there is a section on war and peace that addresses a number of specific wars.

There is also, on the Kucinich site, a lot more detail than on Kaptur's about numerous other issues.  The example of wars and war funding is fairly typical.  In rough terms, Kucinich tends to back peace, justice, and the will of the public, while Kaptur tends to back the very same things when and if the leadership of the Democratic Party happens to do so.  Back on February 25, 2010, she voted to extend the PATRIOT Act without reforms of its abusive procedures.  Kucinich voted No.  Back on October 23, 2007, Kucinich had also voted No on the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, while Kaptur voted Yes.  On December 8, 2010, she voted against the DREAM Act, while Kucinich and a majority of the House and of the Democrats voted for it.  Any elected official will let us down sometimes, but Kaptur is just no Kucinich. 

Many organizations agree. VoteSmart.org lists the rankings of various groups.  Planned Parenthood gives Kucinich a score of 100%, Kaptur 71%.  The ACLU scores Kucinich 94%, Kaptur 75%.  Also favoring Kucinich in their rankings are the Arab American Institute, the Human Rights Campaign, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the League of Conservation Voters, Peace Action, the AFL-CIO, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, etc.  I'm not being selective here.  There don't seem to be any progressive analysts scoring Kaptur over Kucinich on anything.  Progressives like Alan Grayson and Barney Frank are urging us to support Kucinich over Kaptur.

How independent and principled a member of Congress is has a direct, and sometimes devastating, impact on their district and the nation and the world.  Kaptur believes a nuclear power plant at the edge of Lake Erie with a bad history of safety violations should be allowed to continue to operate, while Kucinich has asked for it to be repaired or decommissioned.  Only one of these two representatives is putting the safety of the public first. 

I believe people who care about the future of the United States, from Ohio's new Ninth District or anywhere else, should be following and supporting Kucinich's campaign.  If he loses, we lose.  We may not always agree with him.  He may not always be able to win over a majority of his colleagues.  He may sometimes let us down.  But were he not there, votes that helped end the Iraq war would have never been held.  Debates that have helped curtail further war making would simply not have happened.  Articles of impeachment for Bush and Cheney would never have been introduced.  Countless witnesses before House committees would have gotten off without ever facing the important questions.  Many people pushing for single-payer healthcare in their states would have never heard of it.  Our televisions would be better able than they are now to pretend that majority positions on major issues do not exist, because there would not be that one man in the government willing to raise the issue and publicly lobby his colleagues to join him.

We're such defeatists these days, that we either condemn Kucinich's compromises, forgetting that Kaptur outdoes him in that regard 100-fold, or we imagine that because he's so much better he must be doomed to lose.  On the contrary, Kucinich has a long history of winning congressional elections, both primaries and general.  While the redesigned district includes a larger population from Kaptur's former district than from Kucinich's, it includes more Democrats from Kucinich's than from Kaptur's.  Kucinich inspires his supporters, and in primaries it is the relative turnout of tiny percentages of people that decides. 

Who is in Congress or the White House is going to be of far less importance than who is in the streets and what kind of people's movement is developed to nonviolently resist injustice and war.  But without a single voice inside Congress willing to speak up in the ways Kucinich has, the people's movement will suffer.  There's no lesser-evilism required here.  Kucinich is actually a good representative.  There's no partisanship required here.  Love a party or hate them all; regardless, we should reward those who have listened to our demands.  Or why would anyone listen again?

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The table below shows enacted appropriations, adapted from "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11" by Amy Belasco, Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011, (PDF).  Votes are on final passage of the conference report unless there was no recorded vote.  In that case, the indicated vote is on initial House passage.

a.      FY03 Appropriations Act included $7.1 billion in regular FY03 defense appropriations for GWOT thatDOD cannot track; the FY04 DOD Appropriations Act rescinded $3.5 billion in FY03 war monies.

b.      Title IX funds in FY05 do not include a $1.8 billion scoring adjustment that reverses the previousrescission of FY04 funds because this did not change wartime monies.

c.      Reflects funds obligated for Operation Noble Eagle from DOD’s regular appropriations as reported by the Defense Finance Accounting Service.

d.     The House took separate votes on different sections of the bill, which were then combined when sent to the Senate.

e.      The FY08 Supplemental included funds for both FY08 and bridge funds for FY09.

f.       This bill was the final DOD Appropriations Act and the final version of the CR.  It was preceded by seven other CRs.