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Banned
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Originally Posted by roachboy
dc: understood--my point was that i am not sure that the abramoff connection is the best way to approach the cnp.
i read in this morning's guardian that congress is going to launch investigation of the rendition program. to my mind, dismantling that is a pressing concern.
if the cnp finds itself outed and tangled up in a something, i will shed no tears, but i basically agree with you on why it is not and shold not be a target in itself of congressional investigations at this point.
other types of investigations, though, absolutely.
i want to know what these clowns are doing.
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Quote:
http://www.eac.gov/soaries.asp
Commissioners: DeForest Blake Soaries, Jr., Chairman
Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr.
Appointed to an initial four year term, Dr. DeForest B. Soaries, Jr. was elected Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission at the agency’s first public meeting on March 23, 2004.
In February 2003, Dr. Soaries was appointed by President Bush to serve as a public director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. He was a member of the affordable housing committee of the bank.
From January 12, 1999 to January 15, 2002, Dr. Soaries served as New Jersey's 30th Secretary of State. Appointed by former Governor Christine Todd Whitman, he managed one of the premier departments of State government and served as a senior advisor to the governor on issues that transcended traditional departmental lines.
Dr. Soaries is also the Senior Pastor of the 7,000 member First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey. A pioneer of faith-based community development, Dr. Soaries has led First Baptist in the construction of a new $17 million church complex and the formation of many not-for-profit entities to serve the community surrounding the church.....
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Last week, on this thread:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=110309
I posted the content of the first quote box that follows....consider what Deforest Soaries told Lou Dobbs, just 3 weeks ago. Consider that Soaries was hand picked by Bush to oversee the results of the $2.5 billion federal legislative, cash "infusion" into the E-Voting industry.
If you consider what Soaries says, and who the "players" from the CNP have been who have invested in the E-Vote industry....and the results that Soaries describes....how can anyone advocate a "hands off" approach to congressional investigation of the CNP and the cabal of right wing financiers and religious fundamentalist who direct the officials who they got elected, to funnel public funds and political power (control), in their direction....all in rigidly maintained, secrecy?
Quote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-mhe_EqSmE&eurl= or here:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3656
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...23/ldt.01.html
LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
Changing Tactics, Language in War in Iraq; Iraqi Government Trying to Stop Rising Sectarian Violence; Where's the Fence?
Aired October 23, 2006 - 18:00 ET
.....DOBBS: Looking forward to it. Wolf, thank you.
Joining me now, two former members of the Election Assistance Commission, an agency set up in response to the Florida debacle in the 2000 election, part of the Help America Vote Act.
First meet Deforest Soaries, he's a Republican, former chair of the Election Assistance Commission.
Good to have you here.
Ray Martinez, Democrat, former vice chair of the commission.
Ray, good to have you with us, all the way from Austin, Texas. Thank you.
Let's begin with a third of -- and if we can show these stats. It's sort of interesting, one third of voters this November will be using new voting equipment. Thirty-eight percent will be using electronic voting equipment.
Deforest, what do you think is going to happen?
DEFOREST SOARIES, FORMER ELECTION COMMISSIONER: Well, I think we're going to have frustration at the polls. Many poll workers will be inadequately prepared for the use of this equipment. And if there's a close race, there will be tremendous frustration because there will be difficulty confirming what the real results were, given the lack of any paper to verify what happened at the polls.
DOBBS: And Ray, looking at another statistic that everybody might as well start getting comfortable with, the 2000 voting machines, they malfunctioned in 25 states. I mean, are we going to see that -- something that widespread, do you think, in this election, or will it be even worse?
RAY MARTINEZ, FORMER ELECTION COMMISSIONER: Well, I certainly hope it's not anything to that magnitude, Lou. And I think the American public ought to demand that election officials around the country do their due diligence to ensure that we don't see problems like that. You know, election administration is comprised of three essential parts, Lou, the technology we use, the processes that we have in place and the people that run our elections. And we've seen a lot of problems when it comes to the technology, but we've also seen equal amounts of problems when it comes to the people aspect of election administration. We have to emphasize that as well.
DOBBS: Lots of wonderful people volunteer, Deforest, around this country to work in polling booths and work for the election offices all across this country. As part of the Help America Vote, billions of dollars put into play here, jurisdictions all over the country buying these machines. Are we better off, in your judgment today, than we were in 2000?
SOARIES: Well, I think we're worse off because in 2000, at least we knew what we didn't know. And the hanging chad became center stage in 2000. <b>Today six years later after spending $2.5 billion, we don't know what we don't know. We don't know about security, we don't know enough because the EAC never got enough money for research. The Congress passed a law that authorized $30 billion for research. EAC to this date has received zero of those dollars.</b> The Republican party...
DOBBS: Zero.
<h3>SOARIES: The Republican-led Congress and the Republican White House have failed. And what Ray and I were invited to do was really a charade.</h3> And I think the public, as Ray said, should be outraged and demand results from the local to the federal level.
DOBBS: Ray?
MARTINEZ: Well, I think that's right, Lou. I mean, I certainly agree with my friend and former colleague Buster Soaries, who was an outstanding leader for the EAC.
Look, I think that it's time for us to make our elections work in this country, Lou. I mean, that's the bottom line. And obviously we have a great deal of work to do to make that happen. It's time for us to bring together the best and brightest from the high-tech industry, Lou, the business industry, election officials, et cetera, for us to make things work. You know, Friday, this coming Friday, we'll celebrate -- or actually mark, I suppose some people might scorn the passage -- it's the four-year anniversary of the passage of the Help America Vote Act this coming Friday, of Congress passing that historic law.
It's time, four years later, Lou, six years removed from Florida in 2000, it's time for us to achieve a consensus on exactly what we have to do to really improve the process of election administration.
DOBBS: Deforest Soaries, thank you very being here. Ray Martinez, we thank you as well. I hope you will come back over the next couple of weeks because you make me want to cry. And we have to deal with this issue and come up with a solution as you gentlemen are suggesting. And even with just two weeks remaining before this election, we've got to focus on it. And we thank you for your part, gentlemen.
MARTINEZ: Thank you for having me.
SOARIES: Thank you.
DOBBS: Still ahead, the results of our poll tonight, more of your thoughts. Stay With us........
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Quote:
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,62790,00.html
How E-Voting Threatens Democracy
By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Mar, 29, 2004
.....Although there's no evidence that e-voting machines have ever been rigged, the political partisanship of voting company owners has only added to concerns about the systems. Howard Ahmanson Jr., a right-wing Christian fundamentalist millionaire based in California, bankrolled the founders of ES&S. Ahmanson, heir to the Home Savings of America fortune, no longer holds a stake in ES&S. ......
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Quote:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...15957783/pg_10
(or...page 22 http://www.stjohns.edu/media/3/8985f...746ae69506.pdf
St. John's Law Review, Summer 2005 by Carrier, Michael A
<< Page 1 Continued from page 9. Previous | Next
D. Partisan Affiliations
These vulnerabilities take on added concern in light of the
ties that most of the major voting machine vendors have with the
Republican Party. The chief executive of Diebold, for example,
has been an active Republican fundraiser who famously promised
“to help ‘Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.’”
125
<b>ES&S was initially funded by Howard Ahmanson, a member of
the right-wing Council for National Policy and the Christian
Reconstructionist movement, and is partly owned today by
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.</b>
126
The parent
company of Sequoia is a partner of the Carlyle Group, which has
employed former President George H.W. Bush as senior
advisor.
127
And a significant investor in Hart Intercivic is Tom
Hicks, who bought the Texas Rangers from President George W.
Bush in 1999.
128
VOTE COUNTING
667
It also is concerning that the concentration of vendors is
significantly higher today than it has historically been. Two
companies, Diebold & ES&S, have counted approximately eighty
percent of the votes cast in U.S. elections in recent years.
129
By
reducing the number of systems that need to be compromised,
such developments make it easier to commit widespread
tampering.
130
The dangers of such concentration and party affiliation are
exacerbated by the lack of transparency in vote counting today.
The voting machine vendors refuse to allow inspection of the
software used to count the vote, and the computerization of the
process means that local election officials can no longer uncover
fraud by examining the machines. As a result, the officials rely
more heavily on, and often develop close relationships with, the
vendors.
131
These relationships may play a role in the
enthusiasm for electronic voting displayed by Democratic and
Republican officials alike......
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Quote:
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publ...icle_592.shtml
Why did J. Kenneth Blackwell seek, then hide, his association with super-rich extremists and e-voting magnates?
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Online Journal Guest Writers
Mar 14, 2006, 00:56
The man who stole the 2004 election for George W. Bush -- Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell -- has posted a picture of himself addressing the white supremacist ultra-right Council for National Policy (CNP). He then pulled the picture and tried to hide his participation in the meeting by removing mention of it from his website, kenblackwell.com.
First discovered by a netroots investigator ( uaprogressiveaction.com ), Blackwell's photo at the CNP meeting was found on Blackwell's website on Monday, March 6. Then it mysteriously disappeared......
....The idea of an African-American like Blackwell speaking to a racist cabal like the CNP may seem incongruous. But Blackwell has been courting extremist right-wing support for a long time. Most importantly he has been embraced and supported by Rev. Rob Parsley of the powerful World Harvest Church. Parsley is a wealthy right-wing extremist with a powerful grassroots network throughout the state, and has a major stake in Blackwell's taking to the governorship. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio. With Blackwell's continued control of the voting apparatus, the CNP and Republican Party could well step into an era of unchallenged national domination.
Not surprisingly, Blackwell and a few CNP members share crucial ties to the election/vote counting industry.
The electronic voting machine industry is dominated by only a few corporations: Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Sequoia. Together, Diebold and ES&S count an estimated 80 percent of U.S. black box electronic votes.
In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S's seminal corporation, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from relatives of the far right-wing CNP-linked Howard Ahmanson in 1984, who purchased a 68 percent ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. Ahmanson has also been a chief financier of Rushdoony's Christian Reconstruction movement.
Brothers William and Robert Ahmanson, cousins of Howard, infused Data Mark with new capital. The name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). The Ahmanson brothers have claimed that they have no ties to their more well-known right-wing cousin.
But in 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that Howard and Roberta Ahmanson were important funders of the Discovery Institute, a fount of extremist right-wing publications, including much that pushes creationism in California schools. The Times said the institute's " $1 million annual program has produced 25 books, a stream of conferences and more than 100 fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral research."
According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., was a member of the CNP. Heir to a savings and loan fortune, Ahmanson is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are more informative. They list Ahmanson alongside Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the most important of all right-wing money men. "Such figures as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton's sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster)," wrote The Independent last November.
The Sunday Mail described an individual as " . . . a fundamentalist Christian more in the mould of U.S. multi-millionaire Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who uses his fortune to promote so-called traditional family values. . . . By waving fortunes under their noses, Ahmanson has the ability to cajole candidates into backing his right-wing Christian agenda."
Ahmanson is also a chief contributor to the Chalcedon Institute that supports the Christian reconstruction movement. The movement's philosophy advocates, among other things, "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards."
The Ahmanson brothers sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.
The presence of Ahmanson relatives and Hunt's sister in e-voting software may be a coincidence. But it certainly raises questions as to why family members of anti-democratic forces are getting heavily involved in non-transparent election software. And why they are forging ties to the man in charge of counting votes in Ohio elections......
.....Bob Urosevich was the Programmer and CEO at AIS, before being replaced by Hagel. Bob later headed Diebold Election Systems, but resigned prior to the 2004 election. His brother Todd is a top executive at ES&S. Bob created Diebold's original electronic voting machine software.
Thus, the brothers Urosevich, originally funded by the far right, figure in the counting of approximately 80 percent of electronic votes cast in the United States........
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<b>A week ago, Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio, and Dick Devos in Michigan, both lost in the governor's races in their respective states:</b>
Quote:
http://www.michiganliberal.com/showD...F?diaryId=6964
Russ Bellant profile of Dick DeVos
Dick DeVos Profile
by Russ Bellant
Dick DeVos is the richest and most right wing major party candidate for Governor in Michigan history. He is the product of the Amway company and its decades of interlinks with the most influential religious extremists. He conducts himself like an Amway recruiter, deception and all.....
......DeVos Family Network
Dick DeVos was born into the Amway fortune in Grand Rapids.. His role as international vice president and later president of Amway is due to his anointment by his father. He married Elizabeth ( Betsy ) Prince, daughter of Edgar and Elsa Prince, who generated a family fortune in Holland, just south of Grand Rapids. Both family influences are reflected in the candidate for Governor that we see today.
The Prince family is also deeply connected to extreme right and Republican Party politics. No one in the United States gave more money to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, its Michigan Family Forum affiliate, or its Washington, D.C. arm, the Family Research Council, than the late Edgar Prince. This network formed little known political action committees across the state and country that were more influential but less well known than Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition.
The brother of the would-be First Lady of Michigan, Erik Prince, also adopted the extreme right views of his parents but has used his wealth to start a military mercenary army. The company that it operates under, Blackwater USA, started in 1997 and quickly started getting contracts when George Bush became president. The are a major contractor in Iraq, hiring former Special Forces, Rangers and Navy SEALS to run security for U.S. ambassadors and unconventional warfare in the streets of Iraq’s cities.
The Bush administration also hired them to go into New Orleans days after Katrina, armed with machine guns and authority to kill, using veterans of Iraq. “Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” according to Jeremy Scahill, a journalist who has traveled with them, and Daniela Crespo, who also covered them in New Orleans. Blackwater patrolled and ransacked homes in the Black residential areas of New Orleans. The mercenary outfit is being sued by families of four of their deceased employees in Iraq and by Columbian commandos who were allegedly underpaid.
<h3>roachboy...maybe your wish will come true:</h3>
Blackwater also owns two airlines that were used by the CIA to illegally transport kidnapped citizens of other countries and take them to secret prisons in eastern Europe, where they could be tortured and held incommunicado indefinitely. This “extraordinary rendition” program was condemned in Europe and the Congress for its gross violations of international law.
Since George Bush became President, Blackwater has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts, but is now a featured topic in the new documentary film Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers.
Inheriting Rightist Politics
The Amway of Dick’s father has funded extreme right groups for over thirty years, In 1975 the elder Richard DeVos, for instance, funded the publication of a book that called for the U.S. to be transformed into a “Christian Republic.” This did not mean to merely increase church attendance, but to create movement to where authoritarian church structures would govern the United States, something like the Islamic states in other regions of the world. Richard Sr. and Jr. have been the most generous benefactors of this movement, along with Dick Jr.’s late father-in-law.
Dick Jr. was nurtured in a milieu of a far right wing that believes that the most privileged elite deserve to govern with minimal obligations to the middle or working classes or the poor. They take a hostile or skeptical view of public services, public education and taxpayer funded activities in general. They believe that this is the natural order of things and are comfortable with a form of politically motivated religious authoritarianism that supports their empowerment.
Dick DeVos and his family network have a variety of instruments for spreading their political influence, including membership in formal coalitions, family foundations, political action committees and the Amway corporate system.
<b>Council for National Policy</b>
Perhaps nothing shows DeVos’s extremism more than his membership in the secretive Council for National Policy ( CNP ). The Council was created in 1981 by leaders of the extremist John Birch Society to move the United States in a very rightward direction. The Birchers, as they were known, explicitly rejected democracy, as did many of the allies they recruited for the CNP. For years they organized White Citizens Council to fight the civil rights movement and later melded into the militia movement ( see sidebar ).
The membership list of the CNP is secret, its meetings are secret and their post meeting activities are secret. Beyond acknowledging that it exists, the CNP prefers the underground conspiratorial style. Membership lists obtained by this writer show why they prefer secrecy.
The CNP includes all the key funders and leaders of the far right: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and D. James Kennedy; Richard Shoff, a former leader of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan; a core of the proapartheid lobby that fought to support to the end, in open concert with the last ruling national socialist regime in the world, the South African apartheid government. Also part of the CNP are members of the Coors brewery family and Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.
Ex-lobbyist and confessed felon Jack Abramoff ( who also lobbied on behalf of Blackwater ) and his cohort in crime, former Amway distributor Tom Delay, is also in the CNP.
Abramoff established the International Freedom Foundation in the 1980's to conduct campaigns against Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. It was later discovered that the IFF was a covert instrument of ( apartheid ) South African Military Intelligence. Jesse Helms was its main Senate contact.
CNP member Ralph Reed, former director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and Abramoff associate, wrote a training manual for that group that asserted that the Bible requires employees to submit to their employers because the Bible commanded slaves to submit to their masters.
Members of the Congress such as DeLay, Dan Burton, Jon Kyl, Don Nickles Jesse Helms and other elected officials are part of the CNP, giving members access to the legislative process. AntiUnion activists such as Reed Larson, Mark Mix and others of the National Right to Work Committee and Tom Ellis of the white supremacist Pioneer Fund are also members. The Pioneer Fund once received an award from Nazi Germany for its racialist work
The thrust of the so-called religious leaders of the CNP is toward a movement called Christian Reconstructionism, which claims that our contemporary society is “unBiblical” and should be ruled by theocratic church authority. Also known as Dominionists, these proponents assert that democracy is “heretical,” as are the issues of working people and organized labor; civil rights and social justice issues, as well as empowerment of the disenfranchised. They would replace the Constitution with a form of rule based on Old Testament law. As extreme and bizarre as that sounds, many powerful, politicized religious broadcasters are secretly part of this movement and coordinate political action with others through the CNP. Among those associated with this movement is D. James Kennedy, whose generous funding from the DeVos family allows him to deliver scathing lectures against the gays and lesbians, against civil liberties and for “reclaiming America” to a rightwing version of godliness.
This is the most influential coalition that Dick DeVos is part of. He came in through his father, who is a governor of the CNP. His late father-in-law, Edgar Prince, was the single largest donor to the Council. DeVos Jr.’s foundation also has given the CNP at least $28,000. Others in the DeVos circle that are also in the CNP include Billy Zeoli, head of Gospel Films in Muskegon. Gospel Films is heavily funded by the DeVos’s. In the mid-1990's it had at least six top Amway distributors and two DeVos family members on its board. Zeoli speaks at Amway rallies and collection packets are passed out for donations for him from Amway distributors.
Why does DeVos and his network value being in a conspiratorial organization with so many persons with extreme political agendas? More disturbing is the question is how such a network could operate in secret with such radical goals and yet maintain ties to the White House and Congress, all without accountability. This is the closest thing we have to the leadership core of a fascist political movement and the world is silent.........
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Last edited by host; 11-14-2006 at 12:34 PM..
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