Why Your Vote Won’t Matter

This was actually posted before the last election.

Why Your Vote Won’t Matter

By John Kaminski for Rense.com.

Your vote does not matter. It might not even be counted, assuming you’re allowed to vote to begin with. In fact, if you’re black, and the first four letters of your last name match the first four letters on that famously fabricated list of Florida felons, you definitely won’t be voting at all, because the state of Florida hasn’t bothered to fix its mistakes from the last election ” the same problems that allowed George W. Bush to slither into the White House like the rapine reptilian he is are still in force…
Did you know that Republicans used private planes from Enron Corp. and Halliburton Co., the firm headed by Dick Cheney that also practiced phony accounting fraud, to crisscross the state and block the counting of Florida votes? This time around in the Florida primary, misleading fliers were circulated again, saying that some people should vote on a day after Nov. 5. Similar fliers were circulated in Florida before the 2000 election, which some say confused some voters there. I bet they’d like to hire Arthur Andersen to audit Florida’s elections system…
Like the voting machines. Who provides them, and who operates them?
Most recently, a former Florida secretary of state profited by being a lobbyist for both the state’s counties and the company that sold some of them touch-screen voting machines used in last month’s botched primary election. Sandra Mortham, who served as the state’s top elections official from 1995 to 1999, is a lobbyist for both Election Systems & Software and the Florida Association of Counties, which exclusively endorsed the company’s touchscreen machines in return for a commission… Mortham received a commission from ES&S for every county that bought its touch-screen machines. The exact terms have not been disclosed… Mortham is of course a Republican who before a scandal brought her down was going to be Jeb Bush’s running mate in Florida.
And of course, there is the current problem in Nebraska. Look at the documents, see the loop: ES&S, according to the Nebraska Elections Division, is the ONLY vote-counting company certified to sell machines in Nebraska. ES&S counts 80 percent of the votes; the remaining 20 percent are hand counts.
ES&S is owned by the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy runs the McCarthy Group; Michael McCarthy is the Campaign Treasurer for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel; The FEC designates Michael McCarthy as a Primary Campaign Committee for Candidate Chuck Hagel; and Chuck Hagel’s financials list the McCarthy Group as an Asset, with his investment valued at $1-$5 million.
Hagel came to Omaha from Washington, where he worked with the first George Bush Administration. In news articles by the Omaha World-Herald, Hagel said he was coming to Omaha to become president and partner in the McCarthy Group and Chairman of American Information Systems.
In his congressional bio he is said to have come to Omaha “to prepare for running for office.” The first thing he did was run American Information Systems, a vote-counting company. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Nebraska senatorial campaign. He continues to disclose an investment of $1-5 million in the McCarthy Group, but he does not identify the underlying assets (ES&S). His disclosure documents omit any mention of American Information Systems at all. John Gottschalk has been reported as a director for both the World-Herald Company Inc. (concentrating on the non-newspaper subsidiaries) and ES&S. He was also involved with Senator Hagel in the World USO, has relationships with James Baker; he is listed as a USO pal of George W. Bush. Hmm, there’s that certain odor again.

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Catching Up On Blogging Today…

More movies a little later today — after I catch up on about a million backlogged stories for ya’ll. (The comments will be sparse, if any — I just feel bad enough dumping all of this reading on you guys on a Friday afternoon 🙂
So let’s see…. What do I have in the kitty for the next few days?
How about:
-more protest stuff (of course) — my little adventure continued…
Dana Robinson and Matt Haughey explaining
why they’re looking forward to SXSW 2003
-Cory Doctorow reading from his new novel at
Borderlands Books last weekend
And that ain’t all folks!

Republican Appropriations Committee Chair Forces GAO To Drop Its Case Against Cheney

It’s like a triple-layer conflict of interest layer cake. I don’t know what’s more exciting — finding out how much Cheney knew about Enron and/or the California Energy scam or seeing just how far he and the Republican party will go so that he can remain above the law in order to cover it up.
If there’s nothing to cover up: cough up the documents. No terrorist connection here buddy — this is domestic policy at its core. (Remember that? Domestic policy?)
Too bad the GAO couldn’t stick it out with its case. I knew it was too good to be true that it had kept the pressure on this long.
GOP threats halted GAO Cheney suit
By Peter Brand and Alexander Bolton for The Hill

Threats by Republicans to cut the General Accounting Office (GAO) budget influenced its decision to abandon a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, The Hill has learned.
Sources familiar with high-level discussions at the GAO said Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, met with GAO Comptroller General David Walker earlier this year and

My Little Adventure in Hacktivism for February 16, 2003 Parts 12-13

Part 12 – Trying to march on the sidewalk of Market Street as things get progressively crowded.

Feb 16, 2003 Part 12 of ? (Hi-res 27 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 12 of ? (Lo-res 13 MB)
Pary 13 – A really, really brave guy (who obviously feels very strongly about his beliefs) heckles marchers as they walk by, asking “could you live without oil?”

Feb 16, 2003 Part 13 of ? (Hi-res 24 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 13 of ? (Lo-res 12 MB)

My Little Adventure in Hacktivism for February 16, 2003 Parts 7-11

Part 7 – Crowded Market Street to the singing peace ladies.

Feb 16, 2003 Part 7 of ? (Hi-res 34 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 7 of ? (Lo-res 16 MB)
Not much to show picture-wise for the clips below. You’re either really going to be into the novelty of experiencing a walk/count across the crowd, or you should maybe go on to the next set of clips. (And you won’t hurt my feelings, promise 🙂
Part 8 – Me coming up with the idea of counting how many people are in a line across Market street – from side to side, including the sidewalk. And starting the count.
Feb 16, 2003 Part 8 of ? (Hi-res 37 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 8 of ? (Lo-res 18 MB)
Part 9 – Finishing the count: 62 people across. (West to East.)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 9 of ? (Hi-res 19 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 9 of ? (Lo-res 10 MB)
Part 10 – To enable the determination of even the slightest bit of an “average,” I count as I walk back across the street. (East to West.)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 10 of ? (Hi-res 30 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 10 of ? (Lo-res 14 MB)
Pary 11 – I finish the count: 72 back. So that’s 62 across and 72 back. (I know I say “63” on Part 11, but we know from Part 9 that it was really only 62.)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 11 of ? (Hi-res 22 MB)
Feb 16, 2003 Part 11 of ? (Lo-res 12 MB)

Patriotism Perverted: UnPatriot II (Domestic Security Enhancement Act)


Patriotism Perverted

By Dan Gillmor for the San Jose Mercury News.

The Bush administration’s hostility to our fundamental liberties is unrelenting. Not content with ramming the contemptibly named “USA Patriot Act” through a sadly compliant Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House and its forces are lining up for another whack at the Bill of Rights.
Draft legislation from Attorney General John Ashcroft’s law-enforcement gnomes is making the rounds. It’s apparently being called the “Domestic Security Enhancement Act,” but think of it as “UnPatriot II.”
Read the draft on the Center for Public Integrity’s Web site. Then read the FindLaw Web site’s analysis by Anita Ramasastry, an assistant law professor at the University of Washington School of Law and associate director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce & Technology.
The legislation, Ramasastry warns, is “a wholesale assault on privacy, free speech and freedom of information.” She does not exaggerate.

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How Do You Put A Price On Our Priceless Past?

Just decide that it’s not priceless to begin with. Then say it costs too much.
That’s how Jeb Bush handled it when it was time to put a price on our country’s history — as stored in the Florida State Library.
I am mad as hell about this issue and am ready to do whatever I can about it.
Librarians unite!
If Jeb is allowed to do this, the result could be a domino effect across the country. There is so little of our past preserved as it is. It would be such a shame to lose it all over greed. Greed and disrespect for our country’s heritage and history. Not all of it (or not much of it) is anything to be proud of, admittedly, but it still deserves to be preserved.
How can we ever learn how to not make the same mistakes in the future if there is no record of those mistakes for us to observe and learn from?
It seems ridiculous, but it looks like we’re going to have to fight more than ever for our “right to know“.
Bush winces at price tag on state history
By Diane Roberts for the St. Petersburg Times

There’s a map from 1589, illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s attack on St. Augustine, its colors still bright as summer. There are papers telling how in the early 1970s Disney transformed the groves of Central Florida into the concrete Kingdom of the Mouse. There’s a telegram from civil rights leader Rev. C.K. Steele to Gov. LeRoy Collins, asking him to stop the persecution of black citizens during the Tallahassee bus boycott in 1956. There’s the diary of Gen. Thomas Jesup, who captured Chief Osceola in the Seminole Wars of the 1830s.
It took 150 years to build the collection in the State Library. Jeb Bush, the self-styled “Education Governor,” may destroy it in a few weeks.
Housing and maintaining the library costs around $5-million a year. According to Bush, Florida just can’t afford it. If the governor gets his way, the library will close. The library’s archivists and curators will be fired. The 1-million books and documents that tell the story of Florida from the arrival of Juan Ponce de Leon in 1513 to the disputed presidential election of 2000, will be packed up and sent away.

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Boing Boing Proxy: Live At The Blogosphere MP3’s

BoingBoing’s down today so the Radar was called upon to proxy some time-sensitive material. (via Xeni)

Xeni is breaking in her new account at the Internet Archive.

Archived audio stream for Saturday night’s "Live
at the Blogosphere
" event is now available! Download via http or
ftp (18.5 mg
MP3).

And here are some links to blog coverage. Some of these were posted live during
the event by participants, others are post-event musings: artlung (lots
of links to other blogs, and news coverage) :: Michael :: filchyboy :: boing
boing
:: pictures
from
Co-producer and panelist Susannah "Reverse Cowgirl’s Blog" Breslin
:: panelist
and BoingBoing founder Mark
Frauenfelder’s pictures
:: panelist Evan
Williams
:: panelist doc
searls
::
panelist tony
pierce
:: funktrain (from
Jonah of lablogs.com):: errant.org :: ming.tv :: digital
tavern
:: Jonathan :: kitty
bukkake
:: boogah (pictures)
:: emmanuelle :: john3n ::
:: paul’s
details
:: on
a clear day
:: seliot ::
slashdot ::
lavoice.org ::
turntablemonkey