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Banned
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Originally Posted by Elphaba
Host, we could start an entirely new thread on the current mea culpa of some members of the msp.
And probably should. You or me?  |
I think that I've covered the subject more than once:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/search....8&pp=40&page=1
Your turn.....but I don't recommend it. I thought that I made a convincing reply on a branch of the MSM subject, last week, and, it was naive of me to put the work into it that I did..... I should have anticipated that I wouldn't receive a response: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...&postcount=104
When you post a legitimate article, Elphaba, that is available at "truthout" because of the site's "fair use" notice, it does not matter that it came from an MSM source. "thuthout" is a site that is on the "list" of "guerilla op-ed" sites, so your content and point is on "auto block". You are reduced to preaching only to the choir........
Everyone has to consider that we are all on the same side. IMO, those who thought that Bush was on "their side", or thought that a third party was a viable solution, will have to think again.
The MSM that does sometimes describe things like the following two articles
do, is shrinking. Too many suspect that the LA Times is "too liberal". When and MSM branch reports seomthing new or unique...fact check and draw your own conclusions.
All that is left to do now is to restore the system of checks and balances that was operational and observable, "in action", during the Ken Starr investigations and the impeachment of Clinton. It is in all of our interests to find out is these two reports about Abramoff and the Bush white house are true. The surest way to do that is to vote out republicans in the house and senate in eleven months from now. You cannot use the excuse that democrats spend too much of our money, or that they are too corrupt. What is happening is allowed to go on by voters who voted out the two party balance. No one was concerned that they would be held accountable if they sold their authority to Abramioff. Voters enabled this, and to see people here joke about "Brownie" on another thread, when the man who appointed him and allowed him to resign before he was fired, and allowed him to continue to be paid as a FEMA consultant, is not even blamed, let alone voters admitting their own blame. Indirectly, you voted for Abramoff.
Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...off-bush_x.htm
<b>Controversial lobbyist had close contact with Bush team</b>
WASHINGTON (AP) — In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show.
The meetings between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration ranged from Attorney General John Ashcroft to policy advisers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to his lobbying firm billing records.
Abramoff, a $100,000-plus fundraiser for Bush, is now under criminal investigation for some of his lobbying work. His firm boasted its lobbying team helped revise a section of the Republican Party's 2000 platform to make it favorable to its island client.
In addition, two of Abramoff's lobbying colleagues on the Marianas won political appointments inside federal agencies.
"Our standing with the new administration promises to be solid as several friends of the CNMI (islands) will soon be taking high-ranking positions in the Administration, including within the Interior Department," Abramoff wrote in a January 2001 letter in which he persuaded the island government to follow him as a client to his new lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.
The reception Abramoff's team received from the Bush administration was in stark contrast to the chilly relations of the Clinton years. Abramoff, then at the Preston Gates firm, scored few meetings with Clinton aides and the lobbyist and the islands vehemently opposed White House attempts to extend U.S. labor laws to the territory's clothing factories.
The records from Abramoff's firm, obtained by The Associated Press from the Marianas under an open records request, chronicle Abramoff's careful cultivation of relations with Bush's political team as far back as 1997.
In that year, Abramoff charged the Marianas for getting then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to write a letter expressing support for the Pacific territory's school choice proposal, his billing records show.
"I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative," Bush wrote in a July 18, 1997, letter praising the islands' school plan and copying in an Abramoff deputy.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Thursday that Bush didn't consider Abramoff a friend. "They may have met on occasion, but the president does not know him," she said.
As for the number of Abramoff lobbying team contacts with Bush officials documented in the billing records, Healy said: "We do not know how he defines 'contacts.'"....
.........The documents show his team also had extensive access to Bush administration officials, meeting with Cheney policy advisers Ron Christie and Stephen Ruhlen, Ashcroft at the Justice Department, White House intergovernmental affairs chief Ruben Barrales, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles and others.
Most of the contacts were handled by Abramoff's subordinates, who then reported back to him on the meetings. Abramoff met several times personally with top Interior officials, whose Office of Insular Affairs oversees the Mariana Islands and other U.S. territories.
In all, the records show at least 195 contacts between Abramoff's Marianas lobbying team and the Bush administration from February through November 2001.
At least two people who worked on Abramoff's team at Preston Gates wound up with Bush administration jobs: Patrick Pizzella, named an assistant secretary of labor by Bush; and David Safavian, chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget.
"We have worked with WH Office of Presidential Personnel to ensure that CNMI-relevant positions at various agencies are not awarded to enemies of CNMI," Abramoff's team wrote the Marianas in an October 2001 report on its work for the year.
Abramoff's team didn't neglect party politics either: There were at least two meetings with Republican National Committee officials, including then-finance chief Jack Oliver, as well as attendance at GOP fundraisers.
In 2000, Abramoff and his team were connected enough to both political parties to boast of obtaining early drafts of the platforms each adopted at its presidential nominating convention.
"In the case of the Republican platform, the team reviewed and commented on sections dealing with insular territories to ensure appropriately positive treatment. This was successful," the Preston Gates firm wrote to Marianas.
"In the case of the Democratic Party platform, the team assisted in drafting early versions of neutral language relating to the territories," the firm wrote. "However, heavy intervention by the White House eventually deleted positive references to the CNMI."....
.........he Marianas' lobbying paid off — it fended off proposals in 2001 to extend the U.S. minimum wage to island workers and gained at least $2 million more in federal aid from the administration.
Abramoff's team bragged to the cash-strapped Marianas government that the taxpayer money would cover its lobbying bill: "We believe that this additional funding — along with other funds we expect to secure by the end of the year — will make clear to even our biggest critics that we pay for ourselves," Abramoff teammate Kevin Ring wrote in October 2001, copying in Abramoff.
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Quote:
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/...8743258322.txt
Lobbyist Abramoff is subject of probes from Guam to D.C.
By WALTER F. ROCHE JR. / Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.
The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.
In Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in the U.S. Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court...
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Quote:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...investigation/
<b>Bush removal ended Guam investigation</b>
US attorney's demotion halted probe of lobbyist
By Walter F. Roche Jr., Los Angeles Times | August 8, 2005
.........In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.
In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.
Guam court officials have never explained the contractual arrangement. At the time, Abramoff was a well-known lobbying figure in the Pacific islands because of his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Saipan garment manufacturers, accused of employing workers in what critics called sweatshop conditions.
Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum said the lobbyist ''has no recollection of his being investigated in Guam in 2002. If he had been aware of an investigation, he would have cooperated fully." Blum declined to respond to detailed questions.
The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.
A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.
The acting US attorney was a controversial official in Guam. At the time he was replaced, Black was directing a long-term investigation into allegations of public corruption in the administration of then-Governor Carl Gutierrez. The probe produced numerous indictments, including some of the governor's political associates and top aides.
Black, 56, had served as acting US attorney for Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands since 1991, when he was named to the post by the president's father, President George H. W. Bush.
<b>The career prosecutor, who held a senior position as first assistant before accepting the acting US attorney job, was demoted to a staff post. Black's demotion came after an intensive lobbying effort by supporters of Gutierrez, who had been publicly critical of Black and his investigative efforts.
Black declined to comment for this article.
His replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended for the job by the Guam Republican Party. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove</b> in early 2003.
After taking office, Rapadas recused himself from the public corruption case involving Gutierrez. <b>The new US attorney was a cousin of ''one of the main targets," according to a confidential memo to Justice Department officials.</b>
Rapadas declined to comment and referred questions about his recusal to Justice Department officials who did not respond to requests for comment.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Dec2.html
L.A. Times To End National Edition
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 3, 2004; Page E02
The Los Angeles Times is killing its printed daily national edition at the end of the year, saying the Internet and other electronic distribution channels have made the paper copy irrelevant........
........There will be no staff cuts, said Martha H. Goldstein, a Times spokeswoman......
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Quote:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/...job-cuts_x.htm
Posted 11/16/2005 7:22 PM
<b>'L.A. Times' to cut 85 newsroom jobs</b>
LOS ANGELES (AP) — In the latest high-profile job cuts in the newspaper industry, the Los Angeles Times announced Wednesday it is cutting about 85 newsroom positions, or approximately 8% of its editorial staff.
Some of the cuts already have come through attrition and some will come through a voluntary separation program, editor Dean Baquet wrote in an e-mail to staff. The balance will come through layoffs by year's end......
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Quote:
http://www.honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/a...row540309.html
Edward R. Murrow
See it Now (CBS-TV, March 9, 1954)
"A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy"
.........Murrow: Because a report on Senator McCarthy is by definition controversial we want to say exactly what we mean to say and I request your permission to read from the script whatever remarks Murrow and Friendly may make. If the Senator believes we have done violence to his words or pictures and desires to speak, to answer himself, an opportunity will be afforded him on this program. Our working thesis tonight is this question:
If this fight against Communism is made a fight against America's two great political parties, the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one party system.
We applaud that statement and we think Senator McCarthy ought to. He said it, seventeen months ago in Milwaukee.
McCarthy: The American people realize this cannot be made a fight between America's two great political parties. If this fight against Communism is made a fight between America's two great political parties <b>the American people know that one of those parties will be destroyed and the Republic cannot endure very long as a one party system</b>..........
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