Letter Never Sent

A reader sent some good links on Otto Reich for some reason or another they were not created as links in the comment section so I am posting some of them here. Thanks for sending them in:

1. Who is Otto Reich?
2. Otto Reich’s Dirty Laundry
3. Stop Otto Reich
4. Public Information Research’s Reich links
5. The American Prospect
   “Our Man in Little Havana:”

As anyone who has worked blue-collar jobs knows corporations and management are often rabidly anti-union. In my experience I have worked in jobs where even saying the ‘u’ word can get you in serious trouble. The neanderthals in management openly expressed their hatred and animosity for unions and often spouted completely illogical and misinformed arguments against organized labor. The AFL-CIO website is good for countering this sort of attitude as it presents rebuttals to all the standard slogans and arguments. From a section of the AFL-CIO website, Working America: Setting the Record Straight:

Myth:

We have lower unionization in the United States than in other countries, but those other countries, especially in Europe, have a lot higher unemployment.

Fact:

Our unemployment rate looks good because of the way we measure unemployment.

We don’t count people working part-time who want full-time jobs. We, also, don’t count people who cannot take jobs because they lack child care or transportation to get to jobs. If we include those people our rate is 9.6%, which is about the European average. Don’t forget, in the United States you are counted as employed if you work as little as one hour in a week for wages.

While corporations get billions and billions in ‘tax-rebates’ from the Bush economic stimulus plan ($256 million for Enron alone) companies like Ford Motors are slashing 35,000 jobs. I’m glad we have our priorities straight. There was this idiotic commentator from the Financial Times or some other such rag on Morning Edition the other day. Her position was that layoffs are a necessary expression of the freedom that business must have so that they can cut costs and then create more jobs in the future! She called it something like the freedom to fire to hire. I’m guessing she’s not taking into account that the manufacturing sector has largely been moved out of the country where the same items can be made by people who have none of the protections of American labor law. These same items are then shipped back to the US where they are sold for the same price. This is a result of the never-ending demand of higher profits. Consumers do not benefit, workers do not benefit, communities do not benefit. It is only those who trade in stock and the barons who run the companies who benefit from the increased profits. Profits which have increased greatly while wages and benefits have fallen. Workers are expected to provide for their own retirements while their wages drop below 1968 levels if adjusted for inflation.

Bush has decided to go forward with the controversial recess appointments of Otto Juan Reich and Eugene Scalia. Recess appointments are often used to avoid negative publicity and scrutiny. Clinton also practiced this game. These appointments are clearly a deliberate signal to players influential in providing assistance to the Bush presidential takeover and court battle in the 2000 election. Otto Reich was a propagandist for the Reagan administration who was involved in covertly planting domestic propaganda. He would write op-ed pieces in major newspapers under the names of Contra leaders. He also planted government propaganda by groups he created and controlled like the example here by ‘The Young Republicans’. As a ‘Cuban exile’, he is also a darling of the anti-Castro, conservative Cuban-American set which is influential in Florida politics. Bush clearly wants to throw them a bone for a job well done in Florida. (Get more info on Otto Reich from his file at the National Security Archive)

Eugene Scalia is the son of Justice Antonin Scalia who ruled in favor of Bush during the Bush vs. Gore case before the US Supreme Court. Eugene Scalia’s lawfirm also supported Bush during his Supreme Court case. So, you have Justice Scalia hearing testimony from the lawyers who work closely with his son?! Of course, most ‘conservatives’ will deny any link here. They are as innocent as lambs.

Two of Scalia’s nine children are connected with law firms representing Bush.

• Eugene Scalia, 37, is a partner in the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where Bush lawyer Theodore Olson also is a partner.
• John Scalia, 35, has accepted a job offer with the Washington office of Greenberg Traurig. Another Bush lawyer, Barry S. Richard, is a partner in that firm’s Tallahassee office.

The Bush administration’s stripes are showing. I’m eager to see what other things will turn up.

The US military has moved some Taleban prisoners to the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. To get around protections associated with the Geneva Convention the United States is distinguishing the prisoners as “unlawful combatants”. Even though they will be kept in outdoor wire cages they will be allowed the luxury of practicing their religion.

“Unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Convention,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. “We have indicated that we do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Conventions, to the extent they are appropriate.”

Apparently, the United States military does not like abiding by international agreements. I saw a grainy photo of a hooded and manacled prisoner. It looked pretty inhumane like how you would imagine someone prepared for execution. It’s funny, in World War II even the Nazis followed the Geneva Convention.

I’m wondering why the US has decided to send the POWs to Guantanamo Bay. Does anyone else think it is weird that we have a military base in a country with which we have supported coups and sanctions of? What kind of message is this sending to the Cuba people? Of course, the Cubans are not happy about this. Some Cubans think the United States is seizing the opportunity to buildup its forces in Cuba without triggering suspicions of aggression. They may be right. I don’t think Americans would be happy if there were a Japanese base on our soil or a Cuban military base on our soil. Why is our military all over the world in other people’s countries even when the people of those countries want them out?

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THE PAIN IS GONE: by Ted Rall

“As Zalmay Khalilzad co-wrote in The Washington Quarterly in its Winter 2000 issue, “Afghanistan could prove a valuable corridor for this [Caspian Sea] energy as well as for access to markets in Central Asia.” Khalilzad has an unsavory past. As a State and Defense Department official during the Reagan years, Khalilzad helped supply the anti-Soviet mujihadeen with weapons they’re now using to fight Americans. During the `90s he worked as Unocal’s chief consultant on its Afghan pipeline scheme….”

“…Did Bush exploit the September 11th attacks to justify a Central Asian oil grab? The answer seems clear. On December 31, Bush appointed his special envoy to Afghanistan: Zalmay Khalilzad. “This is a moment of opportunity for Afghanistan,” the former Unocal employee commented upon arrival in Kabul January 5. You bet it is: Pakistan’s Frontier Post reports that U.S. ambassador Wendy Chamberlain met in October with Pakistan’s oil minister to discuss reviving the Unocal project.”

Here’s a great article from the LA Times about the Carlyle Group with some really fantastic detail. Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns. Ex-president and other elites are behind weapon-boosting Carlyle Group:

“On a single day last month, Carlyle earned $237 million selling shares in United Defense Industries, the Army’s fifth-largest contractor. The stock offering was well timed: Carlyle officials say they decided to take the company public only after the Sept. 11 attacks. The stock sale cashed in on increased congressional support for hefty defense spending, including one of United Defense’s cornerstone weapon programs.”

“It’s the first time the president of the United States’ father is on the payroll of one of the largest U.S. defense contractors,” said Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Policy and one of Carlyle’s most ardent critics.

“Between Baker and Carlucci, not to mention dear old dad, the relationship of the president with this particular company is as tight and close as, well, anyone can imagine.”

While puzzling over my stats trying to figure out how to get more people to the site so I can spread the word I came across what must be one of the few sites that actually links to letter never sent. This caused me to puzzle over the description associated with the link. I found it very funny. (Yes, I can laugh at myself). It reads as follows:

Letter Never Sent – like this site, the semi-coherent yet vaguely informative ramblings of someone who spends too much time online.

For some reason this really made my day. For one, it’s nice to have someone take the time to link to me. I thought about the description for a while because I found it to be a nice way of seeing how I am received and understood by complete strangers. Plus, for some reason it’s just funny. It sounds like he’s commanding people to ‘like this site’. Also, my writing consists of ramblings which are semi-coherent (very true many times) yet vaguely informative. My ramblings are informative (good) but only vaguely so (bad?). The last part is admittedly true although I’m not so sure you can spend too much time online. I do work and take time out for hygeine rituals occasionally. All in all, I feel flattered. At least I think I do.

Details of the collapse of Enron are coming out. It’s shaping up to be a huge scandal. In a news analysis in The Times:

“Elements of a classic political scandal are here: A Texas corporation, led by Mr. Bush’s most generous campaign contributor, files the largest bankruptcy petition in American history. A handful of Enron executives are able to sell $1 billion worth of the company’s stock before its collapse, but thousands of employees are barred from selling, losing their life’s savings and their retirement accounts.”

The bankruptcy of Enron is the largest corporate bankruptcy in history. Coincidently, many of the white-collar con artists at Enron are best buds with Bush, Cheney, and the cabinet. The Department of Justice is ‘investigating’, but Attorney-General Ashcroft is removing himself from the investigation due to the fact that Enron bankrolled his failed senate re-election campaign.

Enron helped write our national energy plan. We won’t know all the details until the Bush administration stops stonewalling. In an effort to control the situation and contain political damage, the Bush administration disclosed that Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron and contributor to Bush’s campaign warchest, had called upon two members of the Bush cabinet, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, to solicit a government bailout.

Some details:
1. Enron paid out $55.7 million out to 500 select people prior to filing for bankruptcy protection. Meanwhile, laid-off employees who were not allowed to sell the company stock in their portfolios go home with zilch.
2. Fraud, fraud. The crooks high-class thieves lined their pockets. Enron Corp. executives and directors earned nearly $600 million from selling company stock over the past four years, with many individuals topping $12 million in the past year alone, according to trading data.
3. “Also on Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that she has the authority to freeze $1.1 billion in assets belonging to Enron executives. The ruling relates to a lawsuit from Amalgamated Bank that alleges that Enron executives artificially inflated the price of the company’s stock.
   The bank claims that Enron insiders gained at least $1.1 billion by selling more than 17.3 million shares of stock during the past three years.”

4. An audit reveals the firm which handles Enron’s books, Arthur Andersen LLP, destroyed “significant but undetermined” number of documents related to the company.
5. Cheney met with Enron officials 6 times in 2001 while working on the nation’s energy plan! I feel safe now. The foxes are guarding the hen house.

Read the full Public Citizen report, Blind Faith: How Deregulation and Enron’s Influence Over Government Looted Billions from Americans:

After Enron Corp. used its vast web of political connections to win December 2000 passage of commodities trading legislation that helped the company shield its energy trading activities from government scrutiny, California’s energy crisis suddenly took a dramatic turn for the worse as artificial supply shortages led to frequent rolling blackouts, according to a new Public Citizen report released Friday.

The legislation reducing government oversight of energy trading was muscled through Congress — without a Senate committee hearing — with the aid of U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. Gramm was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over the legislation he co-sponsored, but he chose to bypass his committee, and the bill was quietly tacked onto a “must-pass” appropriations bill late in the session. Gramm’s wife, Wendy Gramm, also aided Enron’s rise to power. As chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she pushed through a key regulatory exemption on Jan. 14, 1993, just as she was about to leave office. Five weeks later, she joined Enron’s board of directors, where she served on the board’s audit committee and had access to key financial information about the company.