from Jackie Goldberg, (with Ed's updating edits): Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 4:18 PM (Now, it's Tuesday, November 8, 6 AM) Subject: The "Special" Election
Hi everyone- (Today is) the so-called "special" election. And the big worry is that only reactionary people will vote! I can tell you for a fact, that this may be one of the more important California elections in recent years. You see, the corporate take-over of California is what is being proposed. Several of the Governor's measures, all sponsored and paid for by members of the corporate elite of California and the United States have several goals. First and foremost they do NOT want to be bothered having to work with the pesky legislature. So, they propose something they call "Live within your means." This measure makes the Governor a King where matters of money are concerned. It also trashes the Prop. 98 guarantee for Public Education. What that means is that the Governor can unilaterally determine how to cut the budget if the legislature cannot get a 2/3 vote to do so. And that means that the Republicans will NEVER vote for a budget if there is a Republican Governor who will be able to cut anything he wants, however he wants, without the approval of the legislature. It means that the legislature is irrelevant to the budget process. Regardless of what you feel about the current Governor, it is not hard to believe that at some time, some Governor will slash health care, human services, and public education because he/she needs no one to approve. Checks and balances were set into the California constitution to prevent one-man rule. This election could overturn this. Then, of course there is the redrawing of district election lines. No state uses retired judges. In fact almost all of them do it the way we in California currently do it. That is the legislature, with the signature of the Governor, writes a plan every ten years. Both sides have to agree. When they cannot agree, a lawsuit puts it into court, and then an active judge will make the changes necessary to make it fair. Think about retired judges. Currently almost all of them are going to be Anglo males, largely drawn from the men appointed by Governors Wilson and Deukmejian. This does not sound "non-partisan" to me. All in all, it is just a power grab. Even the so-called Prop. 78 "drug savings" measure is paid for by the biggest pharmaceutical companies and would be entirely voluntary on their part. The real savings to consumers would come from Prop. 79 and the drug companies are spending millions to stop this good measure. This ballot has something to hate for everyone. One proposition tries to kill off the voice of public employee unions by making it harder to get an OK from members to use money collected to lobby or support candidates. Another tells a young person who wants to teach that they will have absolutely NO job protection for five years! No other job in the state is treated like that. Talented young people with about $100,000 in debt from five years training at a University will not likely choose teaching because of this uncertainty. And of course, no assault on our rights would be complete with an attempt to limit a woman's right to choose. So here is how I am going to vote: Prop. 73 NO Prop. 75 NO Prop. 77 NO Prop. 74 NO Prop. 76 NO Prop. 78 NO That is six big NO's on the November 8th ballot. There are actually two good measures and they are, of course, at the very end. They are Prop. 79 YES; and Prop. 80 YES. I am voting YES on Prop. 79, because it would require the drug companies to negotiate a real deal with the state of California that would cover Medi-Cal recipients, and the savings would also be passed on to all Californians in lowering the drug costs for them as well. And Prop. 80, I am voting YES because it would re-regulate electricity in California so we don't end up with blackouts and with the gaming of our system by Texas Oil and Gas, and Electric company traders like Enron, etc. So, be sure to vote TODAY, Tuesday Novebmer 8th! Go to the polls and VOTE! If we fail to show up, those who want corporate rule will win by default. This is why they wanted a ($250) million special election. They want this vote because they believe we won't go to the polls and a very small minority of reactionary voters will be able to carry the vote on these draconian measures. If you want more detail on these measures, go to the website: www.speakoutca.org. There you will find background info, and a printable voting guide to send to your family and friends, and co-workers. Remember, friends don't let friends neglect their civic duty. Especially when so much is at stake. And if you want to help defeat these measures, you can phone voters (to get out the vote) by calling (213)381-5611 ext. 40 and ask for Norma Lopez. I'll see you there too. Warmest regards, as always, Jackie The "Special" Election is on Tuesday November 8th! *** Veterans For Peace-LA Invites Public for Veterans Day Weekend Memorial, Friday, November 11th thru Sunday November 13th Death Toll for US Troops Killed in Iraq Reaches 2,042 Today California Gold Star Families to Lead Procession of 100 Flag-Draped Coffins Noon on Saturday, November 12th Will Be Highlight of Weekend Call for 400 Volunteers to be Pallbearers WHERE: Arlington West is North of the Santa Monica Pier on Beach (Near Santa Monica Fwy meets Pacific Coast Hwy.) WHEN: Friday, November 11th thru Sunday, November 13th NOTE: 400 Volunteers are Needed at Arlington West just north of Santa Monica Pier at 9AM on Saturday, November 12th to carry 100 flag draped coffins on a procession thru Santa Monica. Call Tonia at 310.455.2688. Just weeks after Americans learned of sad occasion of 2,000 US troops killed in Iraq, (2,042 to date) the country will mark Veterans Day Weekend Friday, November 11th thru Sunday, November 13th with ceremonies and tributes, The Veterans for Peace Arlington West Memorial 'Veterans Day Weekend' program will run for three full days and two nights, Friday, November 11th thru Sunday, November 13th on the beach north of the Santa Monica Pier. The emotional highlight of the weekend will be when a procession beginning at Arlington West will loop through the streets and sidewalks of Santa Monica, 400 pallbearers will carry 100 flag draped coffins. Over a half-dozen California Gold Star Family members will lead the march carrying large photos of their beloved husbands and children who were killed in Iraq. Crosses will be erected in the sand at Arlington West in Santa Monica by Veterans for Peace and volunteers north of Santa Monica Pier every Sunday for the last year and a half, as a tribute not only to the fallen U.S. soldiers in Iraq, but also to the countless innocent Iraqi civilians. The flag draped coffins will rest in forefront, beside a 20 foot long board that names the dead servicemen and women. Visitors are invited to write the name of a soldier, any personal comment, and with a fresh flower, place an identity, photo to each cross and a candle. WHERE: Arlington West is North of the Santa Monica Pier on Beach (All events listed below are located at Arlington West unless designated) ---- FRIDAY, NOV 11TH 7:30AM: The memorial of over 2,000 crosses will be erected. Congresswoman Maxine Waters has been invited to participate in setting up the memorial. 2:00 PM: Speakers will commemorate Veterans Day by reading the names of the soldiers killed at the top of each hour. A gong will sound as each name is read aloud. WHO: Kevin McKeown, Santa Monica City Council Member Abdul Henderson, Iraq War Veteran, featured in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 Tim Goodrich, Iraq and Afghanistan War Veteran Bill Mitchell, son Army Sgt. Michael Mitchell, 25, of Porterville, CA was killed in Sadr City Baghdad on April 4, 2004 (along with 'Peace Mom,' Cindy Sheehan's son Casey.) Joyce Riley, Gulf War Veteran 3:00 PM: Aztec Dancers will perform 4:30 PM: Candle light vigil ceremony will begin, 1,000 candles will illuminate a field of 2,000 plus crosses and continue burning through the night. 5:15 PM: Iraq Vet, Lance Corporal Jeff Key will play taps for the memorial. 6:15 PM: Two films will be projected on the wall of the pier: A Line in the Sand and The Ground Truth. *** The Mysterious Death of Pat Tillman By FRANK RICH New York Times: November 6, 2005 IT would be a compelling story," Patrick Fitzgerald said of the narrative Scooter Libby used to allegedly mislead investigators in the Valerie Wilson leak case, "if only it were true." "Compelling" is higher praise than any Mr. Libby received for his one work of published fiction, a 1996 novel of "murder, passion and heart-stopping chases through the snow" called "The Apprentice." If you read the indictment, you'll see why he merits the critical upgrade. The intricate tale he told the F.B.I. and the grand jury - with its endlessly clever contradictions of his White House colleagues' testimony - is compelling even without the sex and the snow. The medium is the message. This administration just loves to beguile us with a rollicking good story, truth be damned. The propagandistic fable exposed by the leak case - the apocalyptic imminence of Saddam's mushroom clouds - was only the first of its genre. Given that potboiler's huge success at selling the war, its authors couldn't resist providing sequels once we were in Iraq. As the American casualty toll surges past 2,000 and Veterans Day approaches, we need to remember and unmask those scenarios as well. Our troops and their families have too often made the ultimate sacrifice for the official fictions that have corrupted every stage of this war. If there's a tragic example that can serve as representative of the rest, it is surely that of Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals defensive back who famously volunteered for the Army in the spring after 9/11, giving up a $3.6 million N.F.L. contract extension. Tillman wanted to pay something back to his country by pursuing the enemy that actually attacked it, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Instead he was sent to fight a war in Iraq that he didn't see coming when he enlisted because the administration was still hatching it in secret. Only on a second tour of duty was he finally sent into Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan, where, on April 22, 2004, he was killed. On April 30, an official Army press release announcing his Silver Star citation filled in vivid details of his last battle. Tillman, it said, was storming a hill to take out the enemy, even as he "personally provided suppressive fire with an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon machine gun." It would be a compelling story, if only it were true. Five weeks after Tillman's death, the Army acknowledged abruptly, without providing details, that he had "probably" died from friendly fire. Many months after that, investigative journalists at The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times reported that the Army's initial portrayal of his death had been not only bogus but also possibly a cover-up of something darker. "The records show that Tillman fought bravely and honorably until his last breath," Steve Coll wrote in The Post in December 2004. "They also show that his superiors exaggerated his actions and invented details as they burnished his legend in public, at the same time suppressing details that might tarnish Tillman's commanders." This fall The San Francisco Chronicle uncovered still more details with the help of Tillman's divorced parents, who have each reluctantly gone public after receiving conflicting and heavily censored official reports on three Army investigations that only added to the mysteries surrounding their son's death. (Yet another inquiry is under way.) "The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons," said Patrick Tillman, Pat Tillman's father, who discovered that crucial evidence in the case, including his son's uniform and gear, had been destroyed almost immediately. "This cover-up started within minutes of Pat's death, and it started at high levels." His accusations are far from wild. The Chronicle found that Gen. John Abizaid, the top American officer in Iraq, and others in his command had learned by April 29, 2004, that friendly fire had killed their star recruit. That was the day before the Army released its fictitious press release of Tillman's hillside firefight and four days before a nationally televised memorial service back home enshrined the fake account of his death. Yet Tillman's parents, his widow, his brother (who served in the same platoon) and politicians like John McCain (who spoke at Tillman's memorial) were not told the truth for another month. Why? It's here where we find a repeat of the same pattern that drove the Valerie Wilson leak a year earlier. Faced with unwelcome news - from the front, from whistle-blowers, from scandal - this administration will always push back with change-the-subject stunts (like specious terror alerts), fake news or, as with Joseph Wilson, smear campaigns. Much as the White House was out to bring down Mr. Wilson because he threatened to expose its prewar hype of Saddam's supposed nuclear prowess, so the Pentagon might have been out to delay or rewrite a story that could be trouble when public opinion on the war itself was just starting to plummet. It was an election year besides. Tillman's death came after a month of solid bad news for America and the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign alike: the publication of Richard Clarke's book about pre-9/11 administration counterterrorism fecklessness, the savage stringing up of the remains of American contractors in Falluja, the eruption of Sunni and Shiite insurgencies in six Iraqi cities, the first publication of illicit photos of flag-draped coffins. In the days just after Tillman's death, "60 Minutes II" first broadcast the Abu Ghraib photos, Ted Koppel read the names of the war's fallen on "Nightline," and the Pentagon's No. 2, the Iraqi war architect Paul Wolfowitz, understated by more than 200 the number of American casualties to date (722) in an embarrassing televised appearance before Congress. Against this backdrop, it would not do to have it known that the most famous volunteer of the war might have been a victim of gross negligence or fratricide. Though Tillman himself was so idealistic that he refused publicity of any kind when in the Army, he was exploited by the war's cheerleaders as a recruitment lure and was needed to continue in that role after his death. (Even though he was adamantly against the Iraq war, according to friends and relatives interviewed by The Chronicle.) "They blew up their poster boy," Patrick Tillman told The Post; he is convinced that "all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script" the fake narrative (or, as he puts it, "outright lies") that followed. Pat Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, was offended to discover that even President Bush wanted a cameo role in this screenplay: she told The Post that he had offered to tape a memorial to her son for a Cardinals game that would be televised shortly before Election Day. (She said no.) In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Mary Tillman added: "They could have told us upfront that they were suspicious that it was a fratricide but they didn't. They wanted to use him for their purposes. It was good for the administration. It was before the elections. It was during the prison scandal. They needed something that looked good, and it was appalling that they would use him like that." Appalling but consistent. The Pentagon has often failed to give the troops what they need to fight the war in Iraq, from proper support in manpower and planning at the invasion's outset to effective armor for battle to adequately financed health care for those who make it home. But when it comes to using troops in the duplicitous manner that Mary Tillman describes, the sky's the limit. Pat Tillman's case is itself a replay of the fake "Rambo" escapades ascribed to Pfc. Jessica Lynch a year earlier, just when Operation Iraqi Freedom showed the first tentative signs of trouble and the Pentagon needed a feel-good distraction. As if to echo Mary Tillman, Ms. Lynch told Time magazine this year, "I was used as a symbol." But the troops aren't just used as symbols for the commander in chief's political purposes. They are also drafted to serve as photo-op props and extras, whether in an extravaganza like "Mission Accomplished" or a throwaway dog-and-pony show like the recent teleconference in which the president held a "conversation" with soldiers who sounded as spontaneous as the brainwashed G.I.'s in "The Manchurian Candidate." As Mr. Bush's approval rating crashes into the 30's, he and the vice president are so desperate to wrap themselves in khaki that on the day of the Libby indictment, they took separate day trips to mouth the usual stay-the-course platitudes before military audiences. If this was a ploy to split the focus of cable news networks and the public, it failed. Perhaps Scooter Libby is hoping that a so-called faulty-memory defense will save him from jail, but too many other Americans are now refreshing their memories of what went down in the plotting and execution of the war in Iraq. What they find are harsh truths and buried secrets that even the most compelling administration scenarios can no longer disguise. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. 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