reality-based educator

Taking a page from TWU Local 100, the London transit union has called for an immediate strike for New Year's Eve. From Reuters:

LONDON - Hundreds of thousands of London New Year’s Eve revelers faced transport chaos on Saturday as underground rail station staff staged a 24-hour strike on one of the busiest nights of the year.

The RMT union said the industrial action would take full effect around mid-evening as staff failed to turn up for their shifts following the strike’s midday start.

The walkout threatened to undermine a planned free underground service which had been due to run from 11:45 p.m.

Transport officials said they hoped to be able to provide some service on all underground lines but advised passengers to plan alternative routes home.

Some 3 million people use London’s underground, also known as the Tube, every day, though the numbers go down during the weekend.

The Tube is the oldest underground rail network in the world with 275 stations.

The RMT union is striking over the introduction of new work rosters which they say will reduce safety levels on the underground.

“The rosters that London Underground intend to impose would reduce the number of station staff on duty at any one time, in many cases by more than half,” RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said in a statement. “We believe that that would leave stations with insufficient cover, especially in emergencies.”

Operator London Underground denied the routes were unsafe and said there would be no reduction in station staffing.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone and London Underground condemned the strike, saying it may ruin the night for revelers in London where celebrations include a fireworks display at the London Eye wheel on the south bank of the River Thames.

The strike will also affect a New Year’s Day parade which starts at Parliament Square at midday on Sunday and features 10,000 performers from around the world.

Parade publicist Dan Kirkby told BBC radio the strike threatened to ruin two years’ of preparations. “London deserves better than this,” he said. “We are urging people to take a little time and effort, come on overground trains and drive and walk.”

A second underground strike has been set for Jan. 8.

Gee, it' a shame the transit strike's going to ruin the New Year's Day parade in Parliament Square and force New Year's Eve revelers to miss the fireworks display over the Thames.

I guess the drunks will just have to stay home and set fire to trash cans at the stroke of midnight in order to celebrate the New Year, eh?

It is nice to see unions learning a lesson from TWU Local 100, though.

If a transport workers union is going to strike, it should do so when it will cause maximum effect, like the week before Christmas or on New Year's Eve.

If a teacher's union is going to strike, the week the standardized tests are slated to be given seems to be the perfect opportunity to let the politicians and the public know just how essential teachers are to the running of the system.

TWU 100 and the RMT union in London know the lesson about the timing a strike.

Unfortunately the current leadership of the United Federation of Teachers does not.

In the first place, they don't believe in striking because it's against the Taylor Law (a law passed in 1967 by cynical politicians looking to undercut the power of NY public employee unions), but even if they did believe in striking , they wouldn't call it during Regents week when a teacher's strike could cause the maximum effect.

No siree, UFT Preznit Randi Weingarten would call a strike in the summer, right after summer school ended and a few weeks before the regular school year starts.

Cuz' she wouldn't want the strike to be an inconvenience to her buddy, Mayor Moneybags, or her kissing cousin, Chancellor Klein, you know?

Plus she wouldn't want to disrupt the school year by anything as unseemly as a strike.

This is why UFT members got screwed in their last contract while TWU members were able to strike, get a pretty good contract, and $8,000-$14,000 pension refund checks to boot.

Although, to be fair, Randi Weingarten did win UFT members a toilet paper concession from Mayor Bloomberg, as she notes on this new United Federation of Teachers blog called EdzUp.

I know that when I first wrote about the tentative contract agreement between the TWU and the MTA, I thought that the transport workers union had been taken to the cleaners by the MTA for agreeing to have workers pay 1.5% of their salaries toward health care costs as part of the contract deal.

But the more details that emerge about the tentative contract agreement between the TWU and the MTA, the more I think TWU Local 100 President Roger Toussaint really took the MTA and Governor Bagman to the cleaners.

And the news media seems to think the same thing. Just take a look at today's news coverage over the pension refunds Toussaint won for TWU members in the contract. First, the NY Times:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has signed an agreement that guarantees to compensate transit workers more than $100 million if elected officials in Albany block a critical component of the contract settlement that the authority reached with the union this week, according to several representatives on the union's side.

The officials disclosed the existence of the agreement when they were asked to respond to Gov. George E. Pataki's threat to block the proposed contract provision, which calls for about 20,000 transit workers to receive thousands of dollars each in refunds for a portion of pension contributions they made between 1994 and 2001.

On Thursday, after many newspaper editorials and fiscal conservatives denounced the refunds as inexcusably generous to a union that had staged an illegal strike, Mr. Pataki's office warned that the governor was inclined to veto the legislation that would be required to refund the money.

Under the side agreement, the officials said, the substitute compensation could come in the form of cash bonuses, and would be paid out of either the transportation authority's operating budget or its surplus.

David Catalfamo, a spokesman for Mr. Pataki, said that no one in the governor's office had been told of - or had known of - the refund provision before the tentative settlement was announced on Tuesday. He also said yesterday that the office was unaware of any separate agreement that would provide the refunds if the Legislature or Mr. Pataki blocked them.

Gary J. Dellaverson, the authority's chief negotiator, declined yesterday to comment on whether there was a separate agreement outside the six-page memorandum of understanding that the two sides signed on Tuesday.

Asked about the pension refunds, he said: "It wasn't a last-minute highway robbery. We knew what it cost as part of the agreement. I was comfortable with the agreement and I am pleased with it."

The refunds have become a lightning rod for critics who assert that the provision, no matter what its real fiscal effect, gives the appearance of rewarding the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, which staged a 60-hour strike last week in violation of the state's Taylor Law. "The governor was clear: The T.W.U. has broken the law and they will suffer the consequences," said a spokeswoman for Mr. Pataki, Joanna Rose.

...

As a one-time payment, the refunds would total about $132 million, the authority says. Union negotiators have put the figure as high was $200 million.

One union representative said the union's negotiators recognized that the agreed-upon pension refunds could run into trouble in Albany, so they asked for a separate agreement "as a backstop."

The three mediators who developed the framework that ended the strike - Richard A. Curreri, Martin F. Scheinman and Alan R. Viani - said they had been unaware of any side agreement.

Mr. Viani said he thought that even without a separate commitment by the transportation authority, by law it would probably have to compensate the transit workers if the pension refunds are blocked by the Legislature or the governor.

Now the Daily News editorial page:

Looked at in the very best light, Gov. Pataki exerted a singularly feckless lack of command over negotiations between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union - and wound up getting snookered by his own man at the table, MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow.

The governor's aides said yesterday that Pataki was absolutely, unequivocally unaware that Kalikow had agreed to a pension giveaway that will enrich as many as 20,000 strikers with payments of up to $14,000 each - handsomely rewarding the lawlessness of Roger Toussaint's brigades. The aides said Kalikow never told Pataki he had reached a tentative contract by promising to give the TWU at least $110 million from the MTA treasury.

Such an admission is quite damning because it casts Pataki as an out-of-touch bumbler while portraying Kalikow as a con man caught trying to flimflam the governor and the public. Adding to a lousy sense of getting fleeced, Kalikow & Co. tried to hide the pension promise in a secret side deal, separate and apart from the contract.

What say you, Kalikow? Nothing. He and his partners in crime, MTA Executive Director Katherine Lapp and Labor Relations Director Gary Dellaverson, have gone to ground rather than take responsibility for their actions. They must emerge from their holes, because they've got a lot of explaining to do. It'll take courage, as the first question will be: Pataki says you kept him in the dark. True or false?

As for the governor, he needs to come clean, too. The contract provision in question obligates the MTA to use its best efforts to persuade the Legislature and Pataki to enact a law giving back money that union members paid to the city pension system from 1994 to 2000. They have no valid claim on the money and should not get it.

Pataki has twice vetoed measures that would have given the money to TWU members, telling the union to take up the issue in collective bargaining. Now that the union has done so, he says he may veto such a bill again. But weaseling with the word "may" doesn't cut it. The public and, for that matter, the TWU rank and file need to hear that he would kill the idea again.

Then there's Kalikow's secret agreement, which states the MTA will pay the money regardless of what Albany does. Is that so? Last we heard, the MTA board, thick with Pataki appointees, has the last word on ratifying the contract and, presumably, the side deal. So the governor is obliged to state whether he will instruct his representatives to vote against the pension maneuver. He should. He must.

If the MTA board vetoes the pension refund side deal between the MTA and the TWU, the tentative contract agreement deal will fall apart and the two sides will be at an impasse again. The city will again face a crippling transit strike, only this time the MTA, the governor, and the mayor will be portrayed as the bad guys for killing the tentative contract agreement.

So go ahead, MTA board members/Pataki associates - kill the contract deal. Let's see where that gets you in the court of public opinion. Or reality.

People aren't going to care why you killed the contract deal; they're only going to care that you brought the city back to the brink of another crippling transit strike.

And as for Pataki's hope to use his tough anti-union negotiation stance as a springboard for his 2008 presidential ambitions, not so much, eh? The Daily News and many other media outlets are portraying Pataki as a bumbler who got taken to the cleaners in the contract agreement while he was out giving "tough guy" interviews to CNN and NY1.

Oh, well, George. I guess you can always go back to your career as Al D'amato's bagman now that your political career is mercifully at an end.

And finally, as for me, I just want to say I was wrong about Roger Toussaint. While I remain concerned by the health care concessions he gave to the MTA because it is obvious that Mayor Moneybags (or whichever GOP lapdog succeeds him) will use it against the UFT in future contract negotiations, it is becoming increasingly clear as more details emerge about the contract agreement that Toussaint completely outmanuevered the MTA/Pataki/Bloomberg on nearly every other account. He managed to pull a three day strike, then get the state to pay the Taylor Law fines for his workers despite the governor's insistence there would be "no amnesty." And then he outmanuevered Pataki again by creating a side deal with the MTA that ensured the pension paybacks would happen whether Pataki vetoed them up in Albany or not.

Now that is union leadership.

UFT Preznit Randi Weingarten (or Le Gran Fromage, as she is becoming known in certain blogosphere circles) should take some notes from Toussaint for her future negotiations with the city.

But she won't, of course.

While it truly was a bad year to be a worker, even investors didn't make out so well in this year's edition of the Bush economy. From Jerry Knight at the Washington Post:

The closing bell clunked today as the stock market ended one of its most lackadaisical and lackluster years ever.

The Nasdaq Stock Market composite index gained just 1.4 percent over the past 12 months -- the smallest annual move since that index was invented.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.6 percent for the year, setting another record for going nowhere.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index recorded a 3 percent gain, which means the average stock did better than either the blue-chip Dow or the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Still 3 percent--4.5 counting dividends paid by the S&P stocks--was a paltry payoff considering investors could earn more than 4 percent on certificates of deposit or government bonds.

...

Thumbing their noses at Wall Street strategists who encouraged their clients to buy stocks by predicting a "Santa Claus" rally, the traders who rule the market used the last week of the year to cash in what few profits they were able to make. In the process they drove down the market some more, leaving anyone still holding stocks with little to show for the year.

What went wrong? The weather was the worst thing. By slashing oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and trashing the economies of coastal states, hurricanes delivered a painful blow to the economy. As oil prices hit records, consumers began pulling in their horns and honking in derision at gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Detroit had a disastrous year: forced to bribe drivers to buy domestic vehicles, it still saw sales erode.

The Iraq war drained billions out of government coffers producing record budget deficits at the same time soaring oil imports gave the U.S. its worst trade deficit ever.

And the Federal Reserve's relentless increase in interest rates--which almost everyone agreed was necessary -- finally began to pinch.

Interest rates ultimately killed any hope of a year-end rally when a train wreck that Wall Street had seen coming for months finally occurred.

As the Fed boosted short-term rates over the past year, longer term interest rates, which are set by the bond market, refused to follow along. So many investors around the world are eager to buy U.S. bonds that the government could borrow all the money it needs without raising rates.

Usually rates on 10 year bonds are about 1 percentage point higher than rates on 2-year bonds. But the gap narrowed to a tiny fraction of a point and finally disappeared this week. On and off during the week, 2-year bonds were actually paying higher rates than 10 year ones.

Economists call that phenonomon an "inverted yield curve." They note that the last four times it has happened, the U.S. has gone into a recession. Wall Street insists this time will be different and maybe it will. But the threat of a recession ahead prompted many investors to cash in their stock profit gains this week, ending the year on Wall Street with a clunk.

Funny, wasn't Bush bragging just a couple of weeks ago about what a great economy he had created?

Doesn't seem like Wall Street made out so well.

And we know the working class and middle class got screwed by stagnant wages, inflation, and soaring health care/education/retirement costs.

So why do reporters keep repeating the meme that the Bush economy is rolling on all cylinders?

Just tonight on the PBS show Washington Week, Washington Post columnist David Broder noted that Bush's strength right now is the economy and what he needs to do is convince more people how fine a job he is doing creating jobs, creating growth, etc.

And yet, outside of the GDP numbers from the third quarter, most economic statistics point to a pretty lackluster economic recovery that seems to be quickly losing steam. Some economists have already started talking about the inevitable slowdown coming in 2006 and when the yield curve inverted earlier in the week in the bond market, even the talking heads on CNBC started
asking if we were heading for a recession.

So where's the strong economy? How is this economy a political strength for the preznit?

It seems to me that morons like David Broder simply take the talking points they're handed by Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett and Ken Mehlman and repeat them like they're gospel truth ("Rove says the economy's strong? Well, then it must be strong...")

For a couple of years now the American economy has been propped up by cheap money, the Housing Bubble, gobs of consumer spending and a Federal Reserve printing press that's been working overtime to keep currency moving into people's hands.

I have been saying that it's only a matter of time before the whole economic house of cards comes tumbling down. The bill for our Bush Economic spree has got to come due eventually, and frankly, very few people in this country have got the funds to pay it.

Take this article from Newsday as an example:

The consumer heyday finally may be over.

And that could mean big changes ahead.

For the past several years, the U.S. and regional economies have rested on the backs of consumers who kept buying houses, cars, computers and other gadgets, even when their wages weren't keeping up and jobs weren't plentiful.

Now, all of that may change. Interest rates are rising, energy costs continue to pinch budgets and there's more concern than ever over debt levels and the lack of personal savings. More importantly, perhaps, the housing market likely has reached its top -- and 2006 may be the year it softens.

That adds up to a halt in exuberant consumer spending and the potential for far slower economic growth, unless more business spending kicks in. Virtually no one is predicting a recession in 2006 -- but many are predicting an economic slowdown.

"2006 will be a little more dicey," said Martin Cantor, the director of economic development for Sustainable Long Island, an advocacy group. "If you don't consider the consumer tapped out, then I think you're misjudging or being too optimistic about economic growth."

Just ask Annette Dowd. The 51-year-old mother of two from Melville had been feeling pretty good about her financial situation. But as the price of gasoline and heating oil skyrocketed, and her property taxes continued to rise significantly, her family sank deeper and deeper in debt. Now, she and her husband, Michael, have $13,000 in credit card debt plus a home equity line of credit for $60,000, on top of their mortgage.

Now, Dowd is cutting back everywhere she can, even as she recently went back to work part-time to make ends meet. She slashed the family's discretionary spending by 75 percent and avoids even short trips to save gas. Before, she would have a big annual Christmas party that cost as much as $1,000. This year, it was just a small brunch with bagels. Just a couple of years ago, the Dowds considered buying a bigger house; now, she says, they'd never be able to afford the larger mortgage.

2006 is likely to be a year of even more cutbacks, she added.

"I'd like to have my monthly bills come out to be the same as our income," Dowd said. "But instead we go month-to-month and, usually, we're short."

If you looked only at economic data, you'd be surprised by the Dowds' story, since most of 2005's statistics portrayed solid fundamentals and good growth. The reality for local families, however, is quite different. Many area residents say they have never felt the economic expansion take hold, especially because job creation has been weak and wages haven't grown fast enough.

In 2006, the data likely won't be as good and people will still be tightening their belts -- a recipe for a potentially significant slowdown in the economy, experts said. But the biggest story is likely to occur once the predicted shift in the housing market takes hold.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it seem kinda over the top to be carrying $13,000 in credit card debt, $60,000 home equity loan debt, and a large outstanding mortgage when you're already in your fifties and nearing retirement age?

Doesn't it seem worriesome for the American economy as a whole that many Baby Boomers are in similar straits to the Dowds or even worse off, carrying massive amounts of credit card debt and large outstanding mortgages?

I mean, what's going to happen when and if people like the Dowds can't make their credit card payments and/or mortgages anymore. Mrs. Dowd already says there's not enough money left over at the end of the month to pay off all of the bills. Won't that situation worsen if energy prices spike again, the job market tightens, or interest rates continue to rise?

Won't it be bad for the American economy if a bunch of Dowds all across the country have their houses foreclosed and get thrown into the new Dickensian bankruptcy system because they overextended when Uncle Alan Greenspan was lowering interest rates and encouraging consumers to spend early and often?

I know the new meme gaining currency is that business is going to pick up the spending slack from the American consumer, but what happens if business, particularly the banking and credit lending industries, start to find profits declining because half of America is up to its eyeballs in debt?

Won't that mean business can't pick up the spending baton from consumers? Won't that mean a slowdown?

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow warned lawmakers on Thursday that a legally set limit on the government's ability to borrow will be hit in mid-February and urged Congress to raise it quickly.

Failure to do so potentially risks throwing the country into its first default in history, Snow warned in what has become virtually an annual rite as U.S. borrowing needs spiral.

``The administration now projects that the statutory debt limit, currently $8.184 trillion, will be reached in mid-February 2006,'' Snow said in a letter to 21 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate released by Treasury after financial markets had closed.

Snow said that Treasury, if the debt limit was not raised by then, would have to take ``extraordinary actions'' to keep paying its bills for everything from Social Security to national defense spending.

Even if Treasury took ``all available prudent and legal actions to avoid breaching the statutory debt limit, we anticipate that we can finance government operations no longer than mid-March.''

The debt limit was last raised in November 2004 by $800 billion to its current level. The letter to Congress does not specify an amount the Treasury wants the ceiling set at this time.

But he said quick action was needed to preserve the U.S. ability to borrow in global capital markets at the lowest rates possible.

``A failure to increase the debt limit in a timely manner would threaten this unique and important position,'' Snow said.

The call for an increase in the debt ceiling typically provokes a round of criticism from opposition politicians over excessive government spending and the process is drawn out until nearly the last possible moment.

Treasury officials had said in November it was bracing for hefty borrowing needs in the January-March quarter, likely around a record $171 billion, and that it likely would hit the debt limit in that period.

Among other factors, the Treasury cited increased spending for rebuilding Gulf Coast areas hit hard by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A Republican preznit, a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and a Republican majority on the Supreme Court.

Yet the nation has hit its debt limit ceiling twice in the last year and a half.

Remind me again, how is this current version of the Republican Party conservative?

The NY Times declared Roger Toussaint and the TWU victors in their strike battle with Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Pataki and the MTA in this article today:

He was excoriated on tabloid front pages and by the mayor and governor. As thousands streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge on a frigid night during last week's transit strike, someone in a car yelled out his name, prefacing it with a curse.

But now, a day after details of an agreement between the transit workers and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were spelled out, Roger Toussaint, the union's president, seems to have emerged in a far better position than seemed likely just a few days ago.

Mr. Toussaint, whose back appeared to be against the wall last week, can boast of a tentative 37-month contract that meets most of his goals, including raises above the inflation rate and no concessions on pensions. Indeed, several fiscal and labor experts said yesterday that Mr. Toussaint and his union appeared to have bested the transit authority in their contract dispute.

...

But if there is a real winner in the walkout that hobbled the city at the height of the holiday season, it is the union members who went out on strike, and the man who led them.

"It's a good contract for the union in that it does keep in place, for the most part, benefits that are extremely favorable to them," said Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, who called last week for firing the strikers. "For them, you can say this is a great deal."

When Mr. Toussaint appeared before television cameras at 11 p.m. on Tuesday to announce the settlement, he commented little except to read an impressive list of new worker-friendly provisions: raises averaging 3.5 percent a year, the creation of paid maternity leave, a far better health plan for retirees, a much-improved disability plan, the adoption of Martin Luther King's Birthday as a paid holiday, and increased "assault pay" for bus drivers and train operators who are attacked by passengers.

Then Mr. Toussaint announced a big surprise: Some 22,000 workers will each receive thousands of dollars in reimbursements for what are considered excess pension contributions; for several years, these workers paid more toward their pensions than other workers. For those workers, that money will easily offset the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most of them face for taking part in the illegal strike. The union itself could still face a $3 million fine that a judge ordered because of the 60-hour strike.

"The union did especially well, all things considered," said David L. Gregory, a labor relations expert at St. John's University. "Toussaint got everything he needed, and he also got what he needed in terms of the bigger picture. With the strike, he mollified the radical left in his union and helped placate the middle of his rank and file who were demanding to be treated with dignity and respect."

While the list of concessions Toussaint won from the MTA is indeed impressive, note this concession Toussaint gave to the MTA:

The authority did not come away empty-handed, however, as it obtained a major concession: For the first time, the 33,700 transit workers will pay a portion of their health insurance premiums.

...

By getting the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, to agree to have subway and bus workers pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health premiums, the authority took an important step to rein in soaring benefit costs. That provision is expected to save the authority $32 million a year. Not only that, the union agreed that its workers' contribution toward their health premiums might increase if the authority's health costs continued to climb.

Employee contributions will start out at 1.5%. Of course health costs will continue to climb, so I don't think it's out of line to say the MTA will want 5% employee contributions next, then 8%, then 10% and so on...

While the reimbursement of excess pension contributions is an imaginative stroke by Toussaint that will more than offset the strike fines for many of the TWU members and while Toussaint seems to have won many other concessions from the MTA that seemed impossible before the strike, I have to say that as a UFT member, I remain concerned about the health care concession Toussaint gave to the MTA. I am loathe to put forth this precedent that municipal union members will cover part of their own health care costs with the stipulation that employee contributions to health care costs will continue to rise as costs rise for the city and/or MTA.

Note this passage about what Bloomberg will likely do with the health care concession precedent set by the TWU:

One part of the settlement could prove a boon to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who, like the authority, is eager to rein in benefit costs.

"What happened on health care is an important precedent for the mayor in terms of the city's collective bargaining," said Charles M. Brecher, research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed advocacy group. Noting that only a small fraction of city workers now pay a portion of their health premiums, Mr. Brecher said that if the city obtained an identical provision, with workers contributing 1.5 percent of wages, it would save around $300 million a year.

If you're a cop, fireman, teacher, or other city worker, expect to ante up for health care costs next time your contract comes around.

And if you're a member of the UFT, expect to pay more than 1.5% toward health care costs. Remember, Randi Weingarten is a lot dumber than Roger Toussaint and when it gets to contract negotiation, no one gets her clocked cleaned like Randi Weingarten.

As for pension issues, note this from the Times article:

Professor Gregory said the authority had achieved one of its - and the mayor's and governor's - main pension goals during the dispute. "The M.T.A., as a representative of public employers, has achieved an important objective: It has put the issue of soaring public-employee pension costs front and center in the public consciousness," Mr. Gregory said.

That, he said, might pave the way for the State Legislature to enact a pension law that reduces pensions for future government workers and cuts government pension outlays.

I cannot imagine, given the vast array of complaints about state pension costs from all levels of government, how the 25/55 pension tier that Randi Weingarten promised UFT members in the last UFT contract is ever going to come to pass. Given the economic realities of the future (or at least what the government claims is reality) you have to see the state raising the pension age and time needed rather than lowering both.

Overall, I have to admit that Toussaint did better with this contract than I first thought when news came down about it Tuesday night. Obviously the excess pension reimbursements and other deal sweeteners really change how the contract is viewed by most people, although I tell you that I remain very alarmed by the health care contribution concession that I believe will come to back to haunt municipal unions in the very near future.

Nonetheless, when considering winners and losers in the strike battle, I think this passage from the Times article says it all:

In the view of E. J. McMahon, director of the Manhattan Institute's Empire Center for New York State Policy, the transportation authority failed an important test when it agreed to the pension reimbursements. This, he said, negated the punitive aspects of the fine.

"If you want to calculate, 'Is it a win for the M.T.A.?' you'd want the union to be less inclined to strike in the future," he said. "You want this to do something that makes the union members think, 'I don't want to do this again.' You don't seem to do that when you offset the fine for such a large number of workers."

So maybe, just maybe, hardliners in the UFT can force Weingarten and the Unity hacks who were so conciliatory to the mayor to take an offensive tact in the next teachers contract negotiations with the city?

Thank God bank-owned Republicans and Democrats are willing to shill for the banking and credit lending industries and sell out American consumers. From the LA Times:

Lenders Target State Laws
An industry that makes home loans to people with poor credit wants uniform federal rules that could undo tougher consumer protections.

By Jonathan Peterson, Times Staff Writer

RALEIGH, N.C. — A booming industry that makes home loans to people with fragile credit is lobbying Congress for nationwide rules that regulators and consumer advocates warn would roll back tougher state protections.

The debate comes as millions of Americans have taken out loans with higher fees and interest rates than the mortgages granted to people with solid credit. As these "sub-prime" loans have proliferated, so have complaints from borrowers who say they've been slammed by surprise fees and high-pressure salespeople.

More than two dozen states, led by North Carolina, have moved into a vacuum created by weak federal regulation, imposing their own laws targeting abusive practices. The industry's five biggest players are based in California, and one, Orange-based Ameriquest Mortgage Co., is nearing a $325-million settlement with 33 states over allegations of bait-and-switch tactics, inflated appraisals and other issues.

Amid increasing scrutiny of their operations, lenders have rallied behind a bill sponsored by Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.) that would impose uniform national rules on the industry, which last year issued $530 billion in higher-cost mortgages.

Supporters say the measure is needed to replace a hodgepodge of state and local lending laws. Some of those laws, lenders say, make it costlier to extend credit to higher-risk borrowers. In at least one case, a lender says it cannot offer North Carolina customers the lowest possible interest rate because of restrictions in state law.

...

Consumer groups say the Ney-Kanjorski bill is a thinly veiled attempt to undo tough state regulations where they exist, and to prevent new laws from being adopted.

"If we've done a public good here, why does that standard have to be diluted?" asked Joseph A. Smith Jr., North Carolina's banking commissioner.

The national proposed standards, for example, would be more permissive than several state measures when it comes to the practice known as flipping, in which loan agents persuade borrowers to refinance after a short period, in some cases just months after they took out their existing loan.

Flipping generates new fees and commissions for lenders and loan agents and can put cash in the pockets of borrowers. But it also chips away at homeowners' equity and may saddle them with costlier terms than they expected.

The practice has been abetted by rising housing prices which enable loan salespeople to tell borrowers that they can painlessly tap the added equity in their homes. But if home prices level off or decline, some debtors could find themselves with homes that are worth less than their mortgages, and they could face a heightened risk of foreclosure.

Consumer advocates are backing a bill by Reps. Brad Miller and Melvin L. Watt, both North Carolina Democrats, and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) that would parallel the North Carolina law by including a strict ban on flipping and requiring borrowers to get counseling before signing higher-cost loans. Unlike Ney-Kanjorski, it would not prevent states from imposing stricter requirements.

The mortgage banking industry has donated nearly $2 million to lawmakers in the current election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Ney and Kanjorski led the pack, with each reporting the same amount — $38,250 — from the industry.

Ney, who has been subpoenaed as part of a widening federal criminal probe of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, was not available for comment. Kanjorski's office did not respond to questions.

The industry is "hopeful there will be action early next year," said Wright H. Andrews Jr., a lobbyist for the lenders.

Gee, which bill do you think Congress is going to pass and the preznit is going to sign - the bill that guts tougher state laws on the credit lending industry or the bill that creates a uniform tougher federal regulation of the credit lending industry but still allows states to create tougher laws if they so chose?

Sheesh. How much money is enough money for the credit lending and banking industries?

After passing the bankruptcy bill earlier this year, the banks and credit card companies have now made it virtually impossible for individuals to declare bankruptcy and make a fresh start in life no matter how they incurred their personal debt.

Remember, not everybody gets into debt because of personal irresponsibility, as the banking/credit card industries and the politicians they own would have you believe.

Some people, through unfortunate circumstances, like job loss and/or illness, incur large amounts of debt (and fast accruing interest on that debt that often amounts to more than the original debt!) that they are now saddled with for life under the new bankruptcy guidelines.

Now the credit lending industry wants to make sure people who are credit risks have access to crazy loan schemes that will tap out the equity in their homes and increase a debt load they will be stuck with for life?

Good God, welcome to the United Banking and Credit Card States of America - a nation governed by the moneyed interests, for the moneyed interests, and of the moneyed interests.

And let's remember, shall we, that corporations can still declare bankruptcy with equanimity and drop nearly all of their debt burdens. It seems that our righteous politicians, like Mr. Ney and Mr. Kanjorski above, are very big on pushing "personal responsibility" for individuals but not so much for corporations or bank-owned politicians.

I guess when it comes to making the laws of this country, it always come down to this old maxim for the politicians: In The Almighty Dollar We Trust.

If you've got the dollars and are willing to spread 'em around, they'll make the laws for you.

Makes me proud to be an American.

Well, the TWU and the MTA have agreed to a tentative contract, and if I were a TWU member who had gone out on strike for three days and lost six days pay plus taxes, I would not be happy about this piece of shit contract. From The New York Times:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the transit workers' union reached a tentative settlement yesterday in which the authority abandoned its demand for concessions on pensions and the union agreed to have all workers pay a portion of their health insurance premiums, officials involved in the negotiations said.

Last night the executive board of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, voted 37 to 4 to approve the tentative 37-month contract. One member abstained.

The tentative agreement calls, for the first time, for all transit workers to pay 1.5 percent of their wages toward health insurance premiums, cutting into the raises they receive. That comes on top of the fines of slightly more than $1,000 that most transit workers face for participating in last week's illegal transit strike.

The settlement calls for raises of 3 percent in the deal's first year, 4 percent in the second year and 3.5 percent in the third year. The subway and bus workers' current base pay averages $47,000 a year, and with overtime, their average yearly earnings total $55,000.

10.5% raise minus 1.5% a year over three years for health care costs adds up to a snowjob for TWU members.

If I were them, I would be storming TWU headquarters and demanding Roger Toussaint's resignation.

Jesus, if Toussaint was going to accept a piece of shit contract, why go out on strike? Couldn't the TWU have gotten screwed in the deal without losing $3 million to fines and six days pay plus taxes for each individual worker by striking.

Sorry, it's late and maybe I'll think differently in the morning, but this TWU contract is a terrible loss for transit workers and they have every right to feel pissed at the union leadership for leading them into a strike and then selling them out during the mediation process.

I would bet Toussaint is going to get a serious challenge from the dissidents in his union next time a presidential election comes around.

Which is more than what happens in the UFT where Randi Weingarten - or "El Presidente" as she is known in certain circles - will not face a serious challenge for the leadership of the union despite her miserable failure in every contract negotiation she has taken part in.

Either way, tonight feels like another defeat for labor and another victory for the union-busting billionaire mayor.

I hope he chokes on all his billions.

From the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - Stocks tumbled Tuesday, as the bond market gave signals that in the past have preceded economic slowdowns. The Dow Jones industrial average, which lost more than 105 points, chalked up its worst single-day performance since late October.

The yield curve, the spread between the yields of short-term and long-term bonds, inverted for the first time in five years. That means short-term interest rates were higher than long-term interest rates. Investors have been watching the yield curve closely because, in the past, inverted yield curves have preceded recessions.

But the bond market could be signaling no more than a harmless slowing in the economy, said Jon Brorson, head of growth equities at Neuberger Berman in Chicago.

“We’ve never seen a recession without the yield curve inverting, but the corollary is not true: Just because the yield curve inverts does not mean we’re going to have a recession,” he said.

Volume in equity markets was light, exaggerating the effect. Some of the decline might also be attributed to investors’ clearing out their portfolios for the end of the year.

...

The last time the yield curve was inverted was 2000 noted Charles H. Blood Jr., senior financial markets analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. At the time, “it served its classic function of a warning,” he added.

...

Investors have been watching for months as bonds’ long-term yields and short-term yields grew closer. “Although an inverted yield curve does not always imply an economic recession, it has predicted a profit recession 100 percent of the time,” Merrill Lynch’s North American Economist David R. Rosenberg said earlier this month.

I'm not smart enough or knowledgeable enough about the "business of business" to know if this inverted yield curve means a recession is on the horizon, but I do know that the economy is not on as strong a footing as the Bush administration or its apologists would like us all to believe.

Between the record U.S trade deficit, the record U.S. government debt, the record American consumer debt, the miniscule U.S. savings rate, and the Housing Bubble, I don't think it takes a Milton Keynes to figure out something's got to give in the American economy.

Obviously Uncle Alan Greenspan created the Housing Bubble by lowering interest rates in 2001 to diminish the effects of the Bush Recession.

Now we've got an economy that's propped up on the cheap money the American government has been printing hand over fist the last couple of years and lending out to anyone with a Social Security number.

But eventually, as we all know in our own lives, the bill for the spending spree comes due and must be paid.

Don't you kinda get the feeling the bill is coming due right about now?

Which is not to say that we're heading for a recession next quarter.

But you have to wonder how much longer the Bush administration, Wall Street, and some of the other financial wizards can keep this economy pasted together with smoke, mirrors, and consumer spending.

As a member of the UFT, I don't like this rumored contract deal between the TWU and the MTA much at all:

Transit Union leaders will convene today and possibly accept a new contract - which would put an end to the labor strife that led to a three-day strike.

Sources said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are close to a three-year pact that calls for raises of 3%, 4% and 4% for its 33,700 workers.

The framework of the deal would require all workers to contribute toward health insurance, but would not change the existing pension plan or retirement age, sources said.

While health care costs would rise, retirees would see improved health coverage, sources said.

The local's executive board has been told to report to its headquarters on West End Ave. today. It must approve any potential pact and call a ratification vote by members.

...

Union leader Roger Toussaint can say he held the line on pensions; he was vehemently opposed to raising the retirement age from 55 to 62, and fought raising pension contributions for new hires.

MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow can point to the workers' first-ever contribution to health premiums. Transit officials have said pension and health care costs are soaring, and that without workers paying for some of their costs, fares could rise.

...

The pension issue was the biggest stumbling block to a deal. The union wanted to drop the retirement age from 55 to 50, while the MTA wanted it raised to 62 for new workers.

The agency also wanted new hires to fork over 3% of wages for retirement plans, up from 2% given by current workers.

That change would save the MTA relatively little money in the short term. Toussaint and other labor leaders saw it as an attempt to set a precedent so municipal unions could be pressured to accept similar concessions.

Transit workers also abhor the idea of an older retirement age because of the health risks, emotional and physical, that come with their jobs: inhaling bus fumes, working inches from the subway's electrified third rail in the subways, having people regularly jump onto the tracks to commit suicide and toiling every day in a terrorist target.

A new pension scheme for new hires also could split the union into two camps, union members feared.

The union initially sought three straight years of 8% raises, while the MTA at first offered a two-year pact amounting to a 5% wage increase, some of which was only guaranteed if sick time taken was reduced.

Bus drivers, the largest job title, have a starting salary of about $35,000 a year and a top salary, not including overtime, of about $50,000. Including scheduled overtime, the base pay rises to about $58,500.

Here's my problem with the contract:

By agreeing to have employees contribute part of their salaries to health care costs, Toussaint and the TWU have opened the doors to having employees carry much or most of the burden themselves in the near future.

Employee contributions to health care costs will start out at 2% or 3%.

Then in the next contract the the employee contribution will be 5% or 6%.

Then 10%. Then 15%. And so on...

Now I know my friends in the private sector will say they are paying something for their health care, why shouldn't public employees pay something for their health care?

But the private sector employees I know who are paying for part of their health care have a much better plan than GHI, the city plan.

Also, the environment and conditions public employees work in tend to be much harsher than private sector work environments and conditions.

Take the subways, for instance. How many private sector employees (e.g., Citibank, Morgan Stanley, General Mills, etc.) work in an environment loaded with rats, sewage, dirt, lead, asbestos, noise, and potential crime?

How much do you want to make a bet some of those problems I listed above contribute to medical conditions that some subway workers suffer from?

As a New York City public school teacher, I have been exposed to both asbestos (a custodian found an old, crumbling asbestos blanket in my classroom last year) and mold (which I am allergic to). I am also exposed to a shitload of dust on a daily basis (another allergen for me.) The heat in the building is so god awful hot and dry that I have begun to suffer from excema on my arms, shoulders, and hands.

I will not say that these conditions have been completely caused by the conditions and environment I am exposed to on a daily basis as a public school teacher, but they certainly are exacerbated by them. And interestingly enough, when I am on vacation for any extended period of time, my mold and dust allergies and my excema get much better. Coincidence? Maybe, but probably not.

Yet, the city thinks I should carry some of the burden of my health care costs despite the fact that the city doesn't want to provide safe, clean and health working and teaching environments for teachers and children.

I have an idea for future contract negotiations with the city that I think should solve this problem over employee-funded health care contributions

Let's tie employee contributions to health care costs to city contributions to safe, clean, and healthy working conditions.

As soon as the city provides safe, clean, and healthy work environments for its employees, we'll pick up a percentage of our health care costs.

Now that's a deal I'd sign up for.

Poor Gropenfuhrer, nobody trusts him anymore, not the left or the right. From the LA Times:

SACRAMENTO — Humbled by his special election defeat, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is counting on state lawmakers to let bygones be bygones next month as he refocuses his political efforts in the Capitol.

"He's making every effort to work hand in hand with the Legislature," said Margita Thompson, Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman.

But California government, which Schwarzenegger declared last year was so dysfunctional that it required an overhaul by voters, is shaping up to be even more treacherous terrain for the governor in the coming election year.

"The power has shifted back to the Legislature," said Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer (D-Glendale). "I think the Democrats are in the driver's seat."

Much of the core of the Democratic Party is disinclined to give the Republican governor any political victories that might help get him reelected next year, lawmakers and lobbyists say.

Labor unions, which have substantial influence over the Democratic majorities in the Assembly and Senate, are still furious with the governor for trying to weaken their benefits and political influence. Emboldened by their success in leading the fight against Schwarzenegger's four initiatives last month, they are expected to adopt an even more aggressive posture when lawmakers return to Sacramento on Jan. 3.

"There's going to be a lot of pressure not to do anything with the guy," Frommer said. "You have a Legislature that, quite frankly, is not too happy with him. And you've got a Democratic Party and a lot of the constituencies that are pushing hard to keep the governor on the mat in order to set the stage for whomever the Democratic nominee is next year."

The governor also is facing pressure from his right. Republican lawmakers and party activists are concerned about the way he has refocused his administration toward the center since his special election loss.

Since November, Schwarzenegger has appointed a former executive director of the Democratic Party as his chief of staff. And he endorsed an unprecedented borrowing program for public works, something that unnerves the party's fiscal conservatives.

Most GOP lawmakers are more conservative than Schwarzenegger, but he needs their support because two-thirds of the Legislature is required to pass the state budget and to put measures on the statewide ballot.

"The reality is, nothing gets done unless Arnold Schwarzenegger can persuade at least six Republicans in the Assembly and two in the Senate to go along," said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento.

...

Once again, the biggest opposition against Schwarzenegger may come from California's labor unions, which spent more than $100 million to defeat him in November. Unions representing teachers are demanding that the governor increase education funding by $5.5 billion. They say he promised them billions in late 2003 in exchange for their agreeing to defer some funds guaranteed for schools under Proposition 98.

The administration says no such promise was made. But unions made the issue a major part of their campaign against his special election agenda and consider his defeat a mandate for him to restore the money.

"I don't know how the governor could possibly do the State of the State without addressing education funding and how he's going to pay back the money that's owed," said Gale Kaufman, a political consultant for the California Teachers Assn. and the Assembly's Democrats.

Perata and Nuñez said Schwarzenegger needs to repay some of the education money this year.

Labor leaders also are planning to press the Legislature to revisit changes they made to California's workers' compensation insurance system in 2003 and 2004.

The changes are projected to lead to an estimated 38% drop in employer costs in the first two years, according to the state insurance commissioner. But unions complain that insurers have cut the benefits of injured workers too deeply while pocketing most of the savings.

Barry Broad, a lobbyist for the Teamsters and several other unions, said labor's goal is to get new legislation passed and get rid of Schwarzenegger.

"This is a governor who went after us with hammer and saw, said very nasty things about labor unions and how they are to blame for the world's problems," Broad said. "We're not likely to give up on any strongly held principles … for this guy."

I'm glad to see labor unions, especially the teachers union, trying to bury the Gropenfuhrer this year. It would be silly and suicidal for unions to work with this guy on anything and risk helping him get reelected after what he pulled the last two years.

Randi Weingarten should take note that labor unions CAN destroy popular Republican politicians when GOPer's are on the wrong side of the issues, like the Gropenfuhrer was last November.

As for the right-wing, I bet Arnie's gonna have to come out with some real wingnut immigration program to satisy them, a move which should take the sails out of his repositioning to the center.

Poor Gropenfuhrer. Nobody likes him anymore, not even his home town in Austria, which just renamed the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium to the more generic Graz Stadium because Arnie wouldn't commute Tookie Williams' death sentence.

Omigosh, the New York Daily News publishes just its second critic of the hardline bargaining positions of Mayor Moneybags and Governor Bagman took during the transit strike:

This is no defense of Roger Toussaint of the TWU, no defense of the strike that tried to cripple the city for a couple of days near Christmas. But now that the strike has been settled, do not make George Pataki or tough-talking Michael Bloomberg or Peter Kalikow of the MTA into heroes of the city just because they were on the other side. They are not heroes. They are politicians. It is clear by now that when these particular politicians talk about the finances of this city, it is not just transit workers who should keep a hand on their wallets.

Everybody should.

At a time when the three of them, the governor, the mayor and Kalikow of the MTA, wring their hands about the future of New York City, when they make it seem as if that future somehow is tied to the pension fund of the transit workers, please remember that they are the same people who wanted to give away the Hudson Railyards to the New York Jets football team so that the Jets could build a football stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.

Those 13 acres are the last great undeveloped piece of Manhattan. Pataki and Bloomberg and Kalikow were ready to give it away to another rich guy — Woody Johnson, the slow owner of the Jets — for what amounted to tipping money.

Kalikow, hero of the strike, was originally going to sell land appraised at $900 million — MTA land — to the Jets for $100 million.

Then he acted like the roughest character in town by getting them to raise their bid to one third of the appraised value. Kalikow only did that at the time because Cablevision had come in with an offer to buy the land for $400 million and then put up the $350 million to build platforms over the railyards.

When Bruce Ratner, the most caring owner in all of sports, saw an opening to build 17 high-rise buildings around Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson in Brooklyn, all these high-minded politicians who squeezed transit workers this week immediately rolled over for Ratner, too. Another land grab by a rich owner, another time when the biggest politicians in the city and state did everything except put a bow around the property.

Again: We are all in perfect agreement that this is a strike that hurt everybody. Nobody wanted it. Nobody liked it. So many innocent people got hurt by it you couldn't begin to count them.

Toussaint's place in the city's history is fixed, and there is little he can do about it. But please note that in the last hours before the strike, as News columnist Michael Daly pointed out the other day, the MTA got up in the face of this union and demanded new TWU workers pay 6% of their salary into pensions.

This is the same MTA that offers sweetheart deals to any rich sports owner who comes along with a hand out. This is the same governor, the same mayor, who were prepared to roll over for Woody Johnson.

These are the guys who taught the members of the TWU a lesson this week.

How come nobody on NY1 or WNBC or WCBS or WABC or the news radio channels or the New York Times or the New York Daily News or the New York Post or the New York Sun brought up last week that Bloomberg and Patak were ready to give away the West Side rail yards for pennies on the dollar and are still giving away MTA land in Brooklyn in a sweetheart deal with real estate developer Bruce Ratner?

How come only Roger Toussaint and the TWU were the bad guys last week for trying to stand up and protect their wages, pensions, and health care benefits?

Might it be that NY1 and WNBC and WCBS and WABC and the news radio channels and the New York Times and the New York Daily News and the New York Post and the New York Sun are corporate-owned entities fully pushing the anti-union, pro-union-busting politics of their owners?

Might it be that the reporters and media people in New York City, doing the propaganda work for the owners of their respective papers and news outlets, are hypocrites and liars who are selling the public a bill of goods instead of telling us the truth about the economic realities in this city?

Might it be the newspapers are just publishing bullshit and the radio and TV stations airing lies?

The preznit and his administration propagandists have gone on a frenzied media tour trying to convince Americans the situation in Iraq isn't as bad as it seems and anybody who thinks it is going badly is just a "defeatist" who hates freedom and America.

Given the small rise in his poll numbers (from the high 30's to the low 40's), you might think the preznit's campaign to convince America all is right with the Iraq war might be working.

Unfortunately for the preznit and his merry band of liars and p.r. people, reality is a little harder to manipulate than public opinion.

Here's the situation in Iraq, via Reuters:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least five Iraqis and a U.S. soldier were killed in violence in Iraq on Sunday as fresh street protests over election results kept up tension that has soured the mood after a peaceful ballot 10 days ago.

In the turbulent northern city of Mosul, the killing of a Sunni Arab student leader abducted after heading a demonstration against the election results prompted accusations by mourners at his funeral against militias loyal to the victorious Shi'ite Islamists and their Kurdish allies in the interim government.

President Jalal Talabani, meeting the U.S. ambassador who is mediating in efforts to transform the newly inclusive parliament into a viable government, urged Sunni leaders to join a new, broader coalition. Otherwise there would be no peace, he warned.

Disappointed Sunni and secular parties have demanded a rerun of the December 15 election and threatened to boycott parliament, a move that could damage U.S. hopes of forging a consensus that can keep Iraq from breaking up in ethnic and sectarian warfare.

But despite militant rhetoric, seemingly aimed at increasing their leverage, Sunnis are negotiating with others to build a governing coalition on the basis of the existing poll results.

Meeting U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in his Kurdish power base of Sulaimaniya, Talabani said: "Without the Sunni parties there will be no consensus government ... without consensus government there will be no unity, there will be no peace."

LULL OVER

After a lull during the election, secured partly by fierce security measures and partly by an informal ceasefire by Sunni rebels hoping for representation in parliament, deadly attacks have picked up. Ten Iraqi soldiers were killed in one assault on Friday as were 10 worshippers at a Shi'ite mosque.

A U.S. soldier was killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack near Kirkuk on Saturday and troops marking Christmas had no respite on Sunday; an Abrams tank, the giant bulwark of American armored might, was left in flames after a dawn attack in eastern Baghdad -- witness said a roadside bomb blasted it.

A U.S. military spokesman confirmed an attack on a tank and the military said later a U.S. soldier had been killed when his vehicle was hit by an explosive device in Baghdad, though it was not immediately clear whether it was the same incident.

Two car bombs, parked by the roadside, went off around lunchtime, wounding three Iraqi soldiers and a civilian in the city center and three policemen in eastern Baghdad, police said.

Two soldiers were killed and six wounded in a mortar attack on an Iraqi base at Mahmudiya, just south of the capital.

In Kirkuk, where Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen are vying for control of the northern oilfields, a civilian was killed and seven wounded when a car bomb went off close to a police patrol.

Further north, in Mosul, Iraq's third city where ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds are also high, a roadside bomb killed a policeman when it detonated close to his patrol.

Al Qaeda's wing in Iraq said in an Internet posting on Sunday it had abducted and killed three Arab women and an Arab man working for U.S. authorities and the Iraqi government.

Abductions and killings of women have been rare in Iraq, where thousands of civilians have been kidnapped by insurgents or gangs seeking ransom since Saddam Hussein was ousted.

Anger flared round Mosul's university campus, one of Iraq's most distinguished, after the bullet-riddled body of the head of the student union was found on Sunday.

The body, found with the victim's hands bound behind his back, also bore marks of strangling, a hospital source said.

Gunmen had grabbed Qusay Salahaddin from his home on Thursday, two days after he had led a demonstration against the election results, and bundled him into the trunk of a car before driving off, said Mohammed Jassim, a friend of the victim.

From there, Salahaddin used his mobile phone to call for help, Jassim said, accusing Kurdish peshmerga militia: "Save me, the peshmerga have kidnapped me," Jassim quoted Salahaddin, a Sunni Arab, as saying before the line went dead.

Among some 2,000 fellow students gathered at a mosque where the body was taken, accusations quickly flew against another favored target of Sunni Arab complaint, militia forces loyal to one of the main Islamist parties in the Shi'ite Alliance bloc.

No group claimed responsibility for the killing.

ELECTION ANGER

Mosul -- one of two cities named by U.S. President George W. Bush before the election as a model of progress in Iraq -- has been at the forefront of complaints of voter fraud this year.

Provisional national results of the December 15 election show the Shi'ite Alliance bloc should come close to retaining its slim majority in the new legislature, despite a big turnout by Sunni Arabs who boycotted a poll in January.

That has sparked protests in recent days in Baghdad and elsewhere by Sunni and secular parties, despite assurances from U.N. and other officials that irregularities under investigation affect only an insignificant proportion of the ballot.

In between all of the accuasations of voter fraud and the sectarian violence, Knight-Ridder reports that the few Sunni candidates who were elected to parliament last week will be disqualified because they were high-ranking Baath Party officials when Saddam was running the country:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

Knight Ridder has obtained a copy of the court ruling, which has yet to be circulated to the public.

The ruling is likely to dampen Bush administration hopes that the election would bring more of the disaffected Sunni minority into Iraq's political process and undermine Sunni support for the insurgency. Instead, the decision is likely to stoke fears of widening sectarian divisions in a nation already in danger of descending into civil war.

Adil al-Lami, the chief electoral official of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, told Knight Ridder that he would honor the court's decision and that none of the accused Sunnis would appear on the final list of parliament members.

The commission is still counting ballots and said it would have the final list of winners sometime next month.

But preliminary results showed that some of the prominent Sunni politicians on the list had likely won seats. Among those who could lose their seats are: Adnan al-Janabi, the second-highest ranking member of the constitutional committee and a top candidate on U.S.-backed former prime minister Ayad Allawi's slate, and Rasem al-Awadi, a National Assembly member and also on Allawi's slate. Five members of the Iraqi Accord Front, the principal Sunni electoral slate, also were on the list.

Saleh Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni politician, said that the ruling would agitate already frustrated Sunnis who are questioning the validity of the elections.

"The streets will tell you their reaction," Mutlaq said.

On Friday, thousands of Sunnis demonstrated in Baghdad, charging that the election was rigged in favor of the majority Shiite Muslims. The demonstration wasn't a reaction to the court decision because the Iraqi people hadn't learned of it.

"I came to protest against the fraud. There are some Shiites in my neighborhood who told me that they voted twice," said Omar al-Samaraee, a 25-year-old taxi driver who marched in the demonstration. "Should a government be formed based on the current results of the elections, then I think it will be illegitimate."

If the sectarian violence and election protests are bad this week, just wait until the court reveals that these Sunni candidates have been disqualified from sitting in the parliament.

How will our friends in the American media, who lapped up the Bush propaganda about the election almost as readily this month as they did during the January elections, report the violence and discord?

Will they finally acknowledge that despite the administration's best efforts to propagandize the situation in Iraq, this country is heading for serious sectarian violence that no amount of p.r. can change?

Or will they continue to push some of the Bush line that democracy is starting to take hold in Iraq when the reality seems to be the United States spent billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to create either a Shiite-controlled Iraq with close ties to Iran or just chaos.

A heartwarming message from the Nazi Pope, via Reuters:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, ushering in his first Christmas as Pontiff, on Sunday urged the world's Catholics to be beacons of peace in a troubled world and offered a special prayer for an end to strife in the Holy Land.

The 78-year-old German-born Pope, who was elected last April 19 to succeed Pope John Paul, celebrated a solemn Christmas Eve mass in St Peter's Basilica to lead the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics into one of the holiest seasons of the year.

"Where there is love, light shines forth in the world; where there is hatred, the world remains in darkness," he said in his homily before the congregation in a packed basilica.

And then he asked all Catholics to go out and bash homosexuals for being an abomination to all things Godly.

That's our Pope Panzer for you.

He's all for peace and love.

Unless your gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.

Then he's for your eternal damnation.

I'd like to add my own Christmas blessing tonight by referencing Mark Twain:

I hope Pope Benedict spends eternity in John Bunyan's hell.

Homophobic fucker that he is.

Happy Holidays.

This NY Times article by Stephen Greenhouse on the "pension woes" crisis in the United States really set me off this morning:

Fast-rising pension costs for government employees - the issue that helped set off this week's transit strike in New York City - are a problem confronting cities, counties and states nationwide, causing many budgetary experts to predict a wave of painful fights over efforts to scale back government retirement programs.

Many officials and fiscal experts assert that across the nation government pension plans face a shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars. From New Jersey to California, government officials say that attempts - either through contract fights, legislation or public referendums - to limit the amount of money that states and cities contribute to pensions are inevitable and overdue. Labor unions, for their part, say that the worries are overblown.

"Every level of government in New York City, New York State and in states across the country face large and growing pension obligations," said E. J. McMahon, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group. "If nothing is done to bring pensions under control, all the other headaches that state governments will be facing in the next 20 years on needs like education and health will be enormously worse."

...

Many government employees and their unions assert that the campaign to trim pensions threatens America's social contract for the middle class: a respectable pension.

Saying that in recent contracts they had sacrificed wage increases or better health benefits for solid pensions, many public employees and their unions assert that governments are betraying their commitments by seeking to now cut pensions. Further, they argue that much of the shortfall in pension financing could be erased by a strong stock market in the next several years.

"A lot of people are exaggerating the size of the problem," said Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 1.4 million government workers. "Right-wing think tanks and conservative Republicans want to do away with traditional pension plans and replace them with much-cheaper 401(k)'s at the same time they want to give all these tax cuts to the rich."

The fight over public-sector pensions follows a movement to cut private sector pensions. In recent years, corporation after corporation has complained about what they assert are the onerous costs of pensions.

Bethlehem Steel, United Airlines and other companies, saying they could no longer afford it, have stopped paying into their pension plans, forcing the government to step in and absorb billions of dollars in costs. And now Delphi, the giant auto parts company that filed for bankruptcy in October, is threatening to do the same thing.

Meanwhile, some companies, Hewlett Packard among them, have replaced their traditional pension plans with 401(k) plans.

Many courts have ruled that cutting the pensions of current public employees - as opposed to future ones - violates the Constitution, which prohibits governments from breaching contracts. As a result, taxpayers must pay for full pensions promised to government employees.

When private companies go bankrupt and leave badly underfinanced plans, a federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, steps in to insure the workers' pensions, although many workers end up getting smaller pensions than their companies had promised. The agency is running a $23 billion deficit this year and many policy makers fear that its liabilities could mushroom if many more large corporations file for bankruptcy and dump their pension obligations on the government.

...

To control soaring pensions costs, the authority at first demanded raising the retirement age for future employees to 62. Workers can now retire at age 55, after 25 years on the job, and receive pensions equal to half their earnings. They average $55,000 a year, including overtime.

After the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, resisted that demand, the authority made a new proposal, that future transit workers pay 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, compared with 2 percent for current workers.

The transportation authority is working closely with Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who say it is vital to trim fast-rising pension outlays for state and city workers because they threaten the government's ability to provide education, policing and other basic services. New York City's annual pension outlays are expected to jump to nearly $5 billion in 2008, more than double the level in 2004.

Mayor Bloomberg repeatedly called the strikers greedy. "The public says, 'I don't want to pay more taxes and I don't get these kind of benefits,' " he said yesterday. "You have no idea how many e-mails I got, 'I don't make that kind of money. I don't have those kinds of pension benefits. Why are people striking?' "

But Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers' union, said the walkout was aimed at stopping an employer offensive nationwide to cut pensions and other benefits. He said the transportation authority was mimicking corporate America.

"What you have here is a scandalous attempt on the part of the M.T.A. to jump on the bandwagon," he said.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

More profits for the investment class. Less pension, health care and salary benefits for private sector workers.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

More tax cuts aimed at the investment class and corporate loopholes aimed at keeping Wall Street happy. Less pension, health care, and salary benefits for public sector workers.

Inflation's up. Health care costs are up. Energy prices are up. Food prices are up. Housing prices are up.

Workers wages are stagnant and benefits are being cut.

The only thing going up for workers is their productivity.

And their debt load.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

And Mayor Moneybags has the balls to say TWU workers and other public employees shouldn't expect a respectable pension anymore (even though they have often exchanged wage compensation or health care benefts for these pensions) because employees in the private sector no longer receive traditional pension plans?

Come on, Mr. Mayor, don't you think many people realize that greedy rich fuckers like yourself are trying to squeeze everybody in both the public and private sectors out of their pension and health care benefits so you can garner a few more tax breaks and percentage points of profit in your stock portfolio?

And why should it follow that just because private sector employees are exploited by their employers that public employees, though they are ostensibly protected by unions, should follow suit?

Good God, one of the reasons why public employees were able to win pension and health care concessions years ago from government was because they were unionized.

It stands to reason public employees would have an easier time keeping these benefits from being undercut by the investment class because they are protected by their union contracts.

Private employees, on the other hand, are relegated to relying upon the kindness of strangers and the vagaries of the market.

Which is why the Republican Party and their Corporate Overlords have spent the last thirty years in a concerted campaign to tar union workers as lazy, undeserving bums and unions as harmful to business.

Let's face it, the fewer the number of unionized workers, the less compensation that will be paid to middle class and working class employees, and the more money the investment class will make.

Maybe it's time to reintroduce the word "serf" into the American vernacular.

Because that's where all of this is heading. The investment class owns the rest of us, pays us like peasants, and we in turn keep them happy by dutifully working for garbage and purchasing their products.

Ironically, the more the investment class squeezes the working and middle classes, the more the investment class may hurt itself in the future.

The American capitalist system currently is chigging along under the power of the American consumer to purchase a lot of the crap produced by the Multi-Nationals.

Many American consumers are ordinary working and middle class Americans.

But the more Mayor Moneybags and the Corporate Overlords squeeze the middle and working classes of wage compensation and health and pension benefits, the less likely it is that the American consumer can keep propping this piece of shit economy up.

Which means lots of trouble for ALL economic classes in the near future.

TWU members are back to work today and, according to the MTA, the buses and subways are running normally.

We will be rushing to and from work today, thinking about last minute Christmas shopping, vacation plans, holiday parties, work projects being put on hold for the holidays, etc.

How many of us will be thinking about the TWU workers who get us to our stations and/or bus stops safely every day?

How many of us will be thinking about all the blue collars workers across this country who are being asked to take wage cuts, pension benefit cuts and health care benefit cuts so that the investment class can squeeze a few more percentage points of profit out of their stocks or from their tax cuts?

How many of us will remember that in the class war against the middle and working classes, the Bloombergs of the world are winning big-time battles?

How many of us will remember that the next pension or health care benefit Bloomberg (or some other corporate lord) comes for might be our own?

TWU members went back to work at 4 PM today:

On the third day of a citywide transit strike that has left millions without subway and bus service, union leaders ordered their members to begin returning to work this afternoon, ending a 60-hour walkout that caused much hardship but also brought out the creativity of New York commuters.

Transit officials said limited subway and bus service could resume within hours, though normal service could take up to 18 hours to restore.

...

The order to return to work came after executive board of the Transit Workers Union, Local 100, voted 38 to 5 with two abstentions to accept a preliminary framework of a settlement as a basis to end the walkout.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had already agreed to the framework, which was devised by state mediators after all-night negotiations with the union and the authority.

"We thank riders for their patience and forbearance," President Roger Touissant said outside union headquarters this afternoon. "We will be providing various details regarding the outcome of this strike in the next several days."

Now the spin from all involved begins. Bloomberg gave a press conference, Pataki made the rounds of the cable news channels, Toussaint spoke outside of TWU headquarters and a few dissenting TWU executive board members made some angry remarks to the press.

Bottom line is this: until the contract is settled and the details become known, we cannot decide which side won this labor war.

One thing I do know.

After three days of the transit strike, Bloomberg and Pataki were hearing it from big and small businesses in the city to get the strike ended.

While it's true that the union could not have afforded to stay out on strike much longer, it is also true that businesses in the city could not have afforded the lost revenue much longer either.

Which is why both sides were willing to try the mediation route and call a truce in the strike, at least for now.

We'll see if they can actually hammer out a contract agreement next week.

And then we'll take stock of the winners and losers in this strike.

Obviously I, for one, am hoping Toussaint got the pension concessions completely off of the table.

Question is, were Pataki and Bloomberg desperate enough to end the strike to take the pension concession demands off the table, did Toussaint blink on pensions, or was there some sort of compromise on the issue.

The press reports seem to hint at a compromise on the pension issue, but you have to wonder, given the intactable positions taken by both sides on the issue, exactly what kind of compromise could have been worked out by the mediator.

I guess we'll just have to wait until next week or so to see.

All we hear in the corporate media is how the TWU is breaking the Taylor Law by engaging in an "illegal strike." But Juan Gonzalez of the NY Daily News notes that the MTA is breaking the Taylor Law too:

MTA's violating Taylor Law as well

Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg have vowed drastic penalties for the striking members of the Transport Workers Union for violating the Taylor Law.

Yet the mayor and the governor have been completely silent about violations of the same Taylor Law by their own appointed officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The most well-known portion of the law, Section 210, states that "no public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike."

That is not, however, the only provision of the law. Other sections also provide protections to public employees.

City union leaders and state lawmakers keep trying to point that out. They say the MTA itself trampled a key provision of the Taylor Law by demanding that TWU President Roger Toussaint accept an inferior pension plan for future members of his union as a condition of a new labor contract.

Section 201 of the law clearly states that "no such retirement benefits shall be negotiated pursuant to this article, and any benefits so negotiated shall be void."

Only the Legislature has the legal authority to approve changes in public employee pension systems.

Not the MTA. Not the mayor. And not the governor all by himself.

That's the way it always has been.

MTA officials have claimed for several days that reforming the union's pension plan became the main unresolved issue to a settlement.

"That's what's known as an impermissible subject of bargaining," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), who is chairman of the Assembly committee that oversees the MTA.

Sure, unions and public agencies sometimes agree, as part of an overall labor settlement, to jointly petition the Legislature for pension changes, but management can't simply force a union to accept a worse retirement plan.

"If the governor is going to be a tough guy about the Taylor Law with the union, he should be tough as well on the law when it comes to the MTA," Brodsky said yesterday.

This crippling strike could be over in hours if Pataki ordered the MTA to adhere to the same Taylor Law he wants the union to respect.

Toussaint said as much to a group of 40 city labor leaders in a telephone conference around noon yesterday. He repeated it a few hours later in a meeting with several dozen black political and religious leaders and in a press conference later in the afternoon.

His plea is now being taken up by many leaders eager to bring labor peace back to the city.

Municipal union leaders, headed by teachers union chief Randi Weingarten, urged the mayor and the governor to set aside the pension issue for now. Meanwhile, several state legislators made the same pitch in Albany.

If there are reforms needed in public employee pensions, they say, they should be negotiated with all the unions involved in the city's retirement system, not by singling out the transit workers union as a test case.

But even before Toussaint spoke, Pataki delivered yet another blistering criticism of the strikers. Worse, he tried to escalate the conflict by urging no further contract talks until the union returns to work.

In two previous illegal transit strikes during the past 50 years, union leaders and public officials always kept negotiating until they reached a settlement.

Thankfully, MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow moved forward yesterday with serious mediation efforts that continued late last night. Kalikow appears to be the only top MTA official eager to reach a deal.

His boss Pataki, on the other hand, is eager to prove to the nation what a tough-guy President he would make. In Toussaint and his 33,000 union members, he sees his ticket to fame.

So what if the public has to endure a few more days of a transit strike that never should have happened in the first place? Who will listen to a bunch of union members engaged in an illegal strike, the governor and the mayor seem to think.

We'll soon find out if they're right.

It is interesting how the corporate media forgets to tell us that the MTA is also violating the Taylor Law by demanding pension concessions from the union.

Must just be an oversight by the reporters, right?

Riiiigggghhhtttt.

One thing about Pataki: if he is under the delusion that he can use this strike to prove what a tough guy successor he would be to the original tough guy preznit, King George the W, Pataki should be quickly disabused of the notion.

Perhaps somebody would like to float a nation-wide poll of GOP 2008 presidential hopefuls and show Pataki he's garnering low single digit support just below Kinky Friedman and the Teletubby Falwell thinks is gay?

Hell, Pataki couldn't even get reelected governor, let alone get elected president.

Somebody needs to tell him that people just want him to go back to whatever rock he crawled out from under 12 years ago and leave us all alone.

The press coverage this morning across the board suggests the TWU is in trouble. The union is being fined $1 million a day, a judge is threatening to throw the leaders into jail for contempt, the city has gone to court to get larger fines levied against individual workers that would come out of their pockets, not union coffers, and editorial boards and talking heads across the city are talking about what a disaster Toussaint has created for himself and his members.

So what's a striking union leader to do when the shit has really hit the fan and everything looks blackest? According to the Director of Urban Research at the CUNY Grad Center, Toussaint could keep the union out on strike for a long period of time, hoping to force the MTA's hand through scorched earth warfare:

With the fine against the union growing by $1 million each day, Mr. Toussaint may well hope to shoot the moon, reasoning that the financial penalties might grow so large, and bankruptcy so certain, that his union might just as well stay out for 30 days as for 3.

Or, as John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center, put it, "The union recognizes that there is no difference between unbearable fines and doubly unbearable ones."

...

By no means is everything lost for Mr. Toussaint and the union, Mr. Feinstein said.

"There are any number of honorable exits for him, but the first thing he has to do is get back to the bargaining table," Mr. Feinstein said.

Many labor experts say the best opportunity to reach a settlement is over the next few days. If the work stoppage drags on for more than a week, union leaders, already facing union bankruptcy, may feel they have little more to lose, and union members, facing large fines, may believe that the longer they stay out the more likely they will somehow win amnesty, reducing the fines.

Perhaps this is the best strategy for Toussaint if the MTA won't give on the pension concession demands.

Kalikow called Toussaint's remarks yesterday at a press conference that the union would return to work if the MTA took pension concessions off the table "outrageous, " which seems to indicate the MTA (and the real powers behind the board, Bloomberg and Pataki), won't give on the pension concession demands.

At least not right away.

But after 15 or 18 days of a strike that starts to shaves a few zeroes off the GDP ($400 million a day x 15 days = lots of trouble for Bloomberg, Pataki, et al.), I bet they'd be a little less adamant about the pension concession demands.

I'm not sure the union can actually hold out that long.

I'm not sure they should hold out that long.

But if the Bloomberg/Pataki position is that they won't give on anything in the negotiations now that the TWU is on strike, or worse, demand an end to the strike before they'll return to negotiations, perhaps a scorched earth strike strategy is the best tactical response for the union.

Stay out long-term, declare bankruptcy (just like the airlines and other red-blooded American coporations who want to avoid paying their debts!), and force Bloomberg and Pataki to deal with the strike fall-out for a month or more.

And let's face it, bankruptcy has worked really, really well for Delta, United, American, Continental (Pension responsibilities? What pension responsibilities?)...

This seems pretty simple. From the NY Times:

Roger Toussaint, the leader of the transit workers union, said today that his members would return to work only if the Metropolitan Transit Authority took its pension proposal off the table, but he added that the union was ready to resume negotiations right away.

His remarks during a news conference this afternoon came as the city's first transit strike in 25 years stretched into its second day and as the heated verbal jousting between Mr. Toussaint and the governor and mayor intensified, with both sides complaining about the propriety and legality of the other's conduct..

"Provided that the pension issue comes off the table, that would be a basis for us to go back to work," Mr. Toussaint said. He later added: "We are prepared to resume negotiations right away. We wouldn't end the strike as a condition of negotiations."

Soon after he spoke, several government employees' unions including those representing teachers, firefighters and municipal workers backed the transit workers union's demand for the M.T.A. to drop the pension issue from negotiations.

Drop the pension concessions demands, Mr. Mayor and Governor Bagman, and the trains and buses will start moving immediately.

Seems to me you guys could end this strike pretty quickly if you wanted to.

The question is, do you want to?

There's a useful article in the NY Observer that gives some context to the impasse between MTA chairman Peter Kalikow and TWU Local 100 president Roger Toussaint and the reasons why they may not be understanding each other:

After digging himself out of financial difficulties in the 1990’s, Peter Kalikow thought there was more to life than money. This month, when he sat down at the negotiating table across from Roger Toussaint, the chief of the Transit Workers Union, he found out that he was right.

Mr. Kalikow, a lean, third-generation real-estate developer who was buddies with Alfonse D’Amato and George Pataki when they were small-town pols, handed over concession after concession in a 33rd-floor suite at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown. He offered substantial raises and a day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He raised the retirement age for new workers from the proposed 55 to 62, and he relented on his insistence that future hires contribute to health insurance. “He was trying to be a real mensch,” said one outsider who was briefed on the negotiations. Mr. Kalikow, after all, wanted to save his legacy.

Across the table, the burly, goateed Mr. Toussaint apparently had a similarly intangible goal: He wanted to save his dignity—and the dignity of his union members—even if it meant an illegal strike.

To a degree greater than labor conflicts of the recent past, the Transit Strike of 2005—on sale now for $400 million a day—grew not out of a clash of macroeconomic forces, but rather out of the mix-up of two men’s visions and characters, of the fiscal caution and deal-making confidence characteristic of the city’s elite on the one hand, and of an ideological militancy rooted in a revolutionary West Indian past on the other.

...

Conscious of the system’s insatiable hunger for funds, Mr. Kalikow has raised fares twice—and then saw the M.T.A. run a $1 billion surplus this year. He pushed hard for a five-year capital plan and proposed new taxes to pay for it, eventually relying on the $2.9 billion transportation bond act passed by voters last month. While he obliged—perhaps reluctantly—his political masters by selling M.T.A. parcels in Brooklyn and the West Side to the lowest bidders, Mr. Kalikow has also exercised an unusual degree of independence. He pushed for a Second Avenue Subway even though Mayor Bloomberg would rather see the No. 7 line extended, while the Governor wants one-seat train access to the John F. Kennedy International Airport. And even though the strike may overshadow his accomplishments, some city leaders respect him for doing what he believed he had to do to keep the agency financially stable.

...

To the extent he has an Achilles heel, it is that as an unpaid chairman with little experience running a major agency or dealing with transportation issues, Mr. Kalikow has been too hands-off. One transportation expert, who characterizes labor-management relations at the Transit Authority as “something out of the 1930’s,” says that the chairman could have dealt better with the disciplinary measures that irked Mr. Toussaint when the two negotiated a contract three years ago, and that have reappeared today.

“Whether because he is a part-time chairman or not, he has chosen not to get engaged in significant issues involving the M.T.A.’s operations,” the expert said.

Mr. Kalikow is a distinctly New York figure—a real-estate scion—and Mr. Toussaint is another distinctive type, though one absent from New Yorkers’ consciousness for more than a generation. The closest approximation to Mr. Toussaint—who speaks softly, with a lilting accent—was his most famous predecessor, “Red” Mike Quill, who was as garrulous as Mr. Toussaint is sober, but whose County Kerry accent was just as strong as Mr. Toussaint’s West Indian one.

Quill is best remembered for shutting down the city for 10 days in 1966, but part of his myth centered on his self-proclaimed membership in the Irish Republican Army during the Irish war of independence from 1919 to 1921, and the subsequent Irish civil war. The story of Mr. Toussaint—a larger-than-life figure for several years in labor circles—has similar contours. He grew up in Trinidad’s post-independence struggle and spent two decades in train tunnels waging a personal battle with the M.T.A.’s management. But those who know him say his ideological roots are in the labor and political movements of his Caribbean youth.

“Roger is a product of a great intellectual legacy of the Caribbean, and the radical Trinidadian intellectualism that has always been there,” said Brandon Ward, a Guyana-born official at the Department of Transportation who heads the New York chapter of the group Blacks in Government. “He reads. He’s not a floozy.”

...

“He spent his youth battling a neocolonialist regime, marching with army rebels, hiding trade-union organizers,” The Voice’s Tom Robbins reported. “At the age of 17 he was arrested and expelled from high school for writing slogans on the walls. His incendiary message? ‘Free Education,’ he wrote in one spot.”


The movement he joined sought to oust the black successors to British rule, which ended in 1964. The opposition, known as the “Black Power” movement, considered the ruling regime too close to its colonial predecessor, said Philip Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race.

The movement, which peaked around 1970, “was Trinidad’s version of the worldwide student-radical movement at the time, advocating, to some degree, socialist goals,” Mr. Kasinitz said. “It really did look for a while like a possible coup, though it sort of fizzled out. Think Paris, May ’68, but with calypso music.”

Mr. Toussaint, now 49, would have turned 14 in 1970; he left in 1974, and has said that the political climate forced him out. Mr. Kasinitz noted that a dissident would have found it hard to gain admission to a university or to find a good job.

Here, Mr. Toussaint took classes at Brooklyn College before running out of money and finding work eventually as one of many Caribbean-born track cleaners for the M.T.A. He came up as an independent force in a union largely run by African-Americans who had ousted their Irish predecessors, and which had reached a comfortable accommodation with management. Mr. Toussaint’s relationship with the M.T.A., by contrast, was bitter even by the standards of the poisonous relationship between the agency and its workers. He was fired—because, he said, of his union activity—and the M.T.A. then assigned a private detective to follow him. In 2000, Mr. Toussaint was elected union president while contesting his dismissal. With his election, his more militant and heavily (though not exclusively) Caribbean faction took over the union.

“You can’t help but be somewhat reminded of Mike Quill,” said Mr. Kasinitz, “both in the uncompromising militancy and the fact that, just like Mike Quill drew on this I.R.A. background, Toussaint certainly ideologically draws on the militancy that comes out of that Caribbean Black Power struggle background.”

As the strike began in earnest, Mr. Toussaint was standing with few allies and with his international union trying to remove him. Mr. Toussaint is staking his career and his union’s future on some of the intangible factors—“dignity” is the word he keeps using—that have always driven his career, but which seem almost totally foreign, or archaic, in 21st-century labor negotiations.

“These people feel they’re so ill-treated by the M.T.A. that they’re willing to jeopardize their financial stability and that of their families to take a stand,” said State Senator Diane Savino, a labor-movement insider who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. “This is obviously not about money. It’s about dignity.”

I don't really believe that Kalikow's calling the shots in these negotiations. Obviously Bloomberg and Pataki are behind the hardball tactics, including the late hour pension concessions the MTA demanded from the TWU on Monday night right before the deadline that ultimately forced the union to strike.

I do believe, however, that Kalikow and Toussaint are talking different languages (i.e., Kalikow's talking money, Toussaint's talking respect) and come from disparate cultures - corporate management culture and union employee/post-colonial intellectual culture.

I don't know how you bridge the gap between these cultures.

As a union member, I have my own biases against both the corporate cronies Bloomberg and Klein brought in to run the DOE as well as the old BOE patronage hacks who used to run the system in the old days. It is hard for me to overcome my biases and my inherent distrust of the people running the DOE, and frankly my experience these past five years tells me my distrust in the DOE leadership is well placed. Still, I'm sure that occasionally my suspicion of Klein and his merry DOE pranksters and bulletin board measurers is misplaced.

So does anybody have any ideas on how we bridge the gap between the corporate management culture and the union culture? Is there any way we can find "common ground"?

This excellent and eloquent column from Juan Gonzalez of The New York Daily News does a pretty good job explaining how this transit strike could have been avoided and why working and middle class New Yorkers should be supporting the TWU. I am quoting the column in full:

Arrogance of the MTA made strike a certainty

Willie Casiano and his fellow union members tried to keep warm over a trash-can fire yesterday morning while they walked the picket line outside the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's sprawling train-overhaul shop at 207th St. in Inwood.

Down at City Hall, Mayor Bloomberg was blasting the members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 as greedy, as thugs and criminals for daring to walk off the job for a decent contract, for creating massive inconvenience to subway and bus riders.

There is, of course, never a good time for any strike.

The timing was especially tough for Casiano, who landed his mechanic's job at the MTA after the 1980 transit strike.

On Monday, his doctor broke the news that the cancer in Casiano's spine had spread to his lung. He's already endured months of grueling chemotherapy. Now he faces applying to the MTA for disability.

What happened to this sick worker and to so many other employees at the MTA is as much the reason for this strike as a wage increase, pension or health care benefit.

"Ever since I started missing work for chemo treatments, my supervisor's been accusing me of chronic sick-leave abuse," Casiano said.

Nelson Rivera, shop chairman for the 300 mechanics and car cleaners at 207th St., says Casiano is not the only worker penalized for illness. Another mechanic with 30 years on the job recently had a heart operation.

"When the guy came back to work, the MTA demoted him to security guard instead of giving him light duties," Rivera said. "Since then, he's been disciplined twice and is now facing a possible dismissal in 30 days."

Local 100 President Roger Toussaint has repeatedly complained that the MTA issued a phenomenal 15,000 disciplinary actions against his members last year.

When so many workers are being punished and harassed daily by management, something is deeply wrong with the people at the top of that agency.

"We've been fed up with the MTA and wanted a strike for years," Rivera said. "But until Roger got elected, no union leader dared to stand up to management."

All across this city, workers who have no pensions and who must pay huge premiums for health insurance hear about transit workers fighting to preserve pensions at 55 and employer-paid health insurance. They fall prey to the Bloomberg line of "greedy workers."

Have the rest of us been beaten down, exploited and abused for so long by our own employers that we will allow transit workers who dare to defend their standard of living to be painted as thugs?

To hear Bloomberg talk, the Taylor Law came down with the Ten Commandments - and wasn't a modern concoction by politicians to curb the power and influence of our city's municipal unions.

The mayor apparently wants Toussaint and the TWU to accept a two-tier pension system. Then he can get all the municipal unions to follow suit and accept a weak new pension tier in their next contracts.

Even then-Mayor Ed Koch, who presided over the 1980 strike, later admitted in his autobiography how worried he was that then-Gov. Hugh Carey and Richard Ravitch, the MTA chairman at the time, would set a pattern in their contract with the TWU that other city workers would want.

But Koch at least had the courage to act like a leader, not a bully. He went to the talks being conducted and urged round-the-clock negotiations.

Bloomberg and Gov. Pataki stay far away from the talks, but behind the scenes they order their messenger, Peter Kalikow, not to give any more ground to Toussaint and the workers.

Tragically, there was no need for this strike. Not with a $1 billion surplus at the MTA. The agency's arrogant managers figured they could keep abusing their workers forever. They figured wrong.

For Casiano and his fellow transit workers, no matter what happens, no matter how much they end up paying in fines, the MTA and the leaders of this city will never treat them the same way again.

Originally published on December 21, 2005

My question is, how do we get working class and middle class New Yorkers to stop parroting Bloomberg's meme that the TWU members are "greedy, selfish people"? How do we get people to realize that the union went on strike to try and protect the standard of living of its members and that if the standard of living for union members is decreased, the standard of living for non-union members will be decreased even more?

I have a friend who is ordinarily pretty liberal on labor issues. She is irate at the union and believes the TWU is solely at fault for this job action. When I asked her how she knows this, she told me she had learned this from thenews on the television and in the papers.

And therein lies one of the problems. The news media coverage of the TWU is becoming pretty negative. The cover of the Daily News today reads "Mad As Hell" and most of the stories inside tell readers how New Yorkers are "fuming" at the union. The rest of the papers aren't much better.

The coverage on the TV is just as negative toward the union. Many of the shivering reporters are doing their "Man on the Street" interviews with angry New Yorkers content to blame the union for the strike while the anchors are asking questions like "Why couldn't the TWU work without a contract the way the other municipal unions do?"

Never mind that the right-wing publisher of The Daily News, Mort Zuckerman, stands to lose millions in his business interests from the strike and is an infamous union-buster himself to boot (the Daily News has a history of ugly contract negotiations and strikes.) Never mind that most newspaper publishers or TV conglomerates have an interest in union-busting and tailoring a line that the workers are "selfish" and "greedy."

There seems to be very little media scrutiny of the MTA's behavior in all of this. Few in the press outside of Juan Gonzalez seem to be asking real questions about the MTA's finances or questioning their bargaining strategy during the negotiations. For the media, the responsibility for this strike lies almost solely with the union.

One media piece that does question the MTA bargaining position is this Stephen Greenhouse article in the Times this morning that says the MTA made a last minute demand on pensions that completely derailed the contract talks and forced the union into a strike. But according to the Greenhouse article, the pension demand will actually only save the MTA $20 million bucks while this strike is supposed to costing the city many millions per day. So why did the MTA demand this pension concession?

On the final day of intense negotiations, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, it turns out, greatly altered what it had called its final offer, to address many of the objections of the transit workers' union. The authority improved its earlier wage proposals, dropped its demand for concessions on health benefits and stopped calling for an increase in the retirement age, to 62 from 55.

But then, just hours before the strike deadline, the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in the authority's soaring pension costs, he asked that all new transit workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the first time in a quarter-century.

Yet for all the rage and bluster that followed, this war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years.

It seemed a small figure, considering that the city says that every day of the strike will cost its businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues. But the authority contends that it must act now to prevent a "tidal wave" of pension outlays if costs are not brought under control.

Roger Toussaint, the president of the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said the pension proposal, made Monday night just before the 12:01 a.m. strike deadline, would effectively cut the wages of new workers by 4 percent.

"They're trying to beat down wages for our new workers," Mr. Toussaint said yesterday.

In the days immediately before the strike deadline, the union kept hammering the point that the authority's pension demands would save little over the life of a three-year contract.

Indeed, not just Mr. Toussaint but some other New Yorkers are questioning whether it was worthwhile for the authority to go to war over the issue when the authority's pension demands would apparently save less over the next three years than what the New York City Police Department will spend on extra overtime during the first two days of the strike.

"What they'd be saving on pensions is a pittance," Mr. Toussaint said.

Robert Linn, a former New York City labor commissioner, questioned the transportation authority's decision - with the backing of the mayor and governor - to go to the mat over pensions with a union that can exact huge pain on the city in a year when the authority was enjoying a $1 billion surplus.

"They might have picked a union that was more willing to consider the subject," Mr. Linn said. "It not just the considerable economic power of this union, it's also the timing," just before Christmas. "It's tremendously problematic."

Gary J. Dellaverson, the authority's director of labor relations, said he and the authority's other negotiators had tried to be flexible in making the pension offer.

"We tried to remold our position, to be reflective of their issues and still be consistent with our finances and our bargaining goals - what we considered a good faith effort to close the deal," he said.

Labor negotiations resemble high-stakes poker, and it was not until a few hours before the strike deadline that the authority 's chairman, Mr. Kalikow, showed his hand, making an offer far different from what he had previously said was his final offer.

With the transit workers' union demanding raises above inflation, Mr. Kalikow raised his wage offer so that raises would average 3.5 percent a year for three years, up from 3 percent in his previous offer. Responding to the union's demand that he not raise the retirement age, Mr. Kalikow also dropped his proposal that future transit workers not qualify for a full pension until age 62, up from 55 for current workers.

But then he put his new demand on the table, that new workers contribute 6 percent of their wages to finance their pensions - a demand that clashed with Mr. Toussaint's oft-repeated refusal to sell out the "unborn," meaning new workers.

Mr. Dellaverson declined to spell out how much that proposal would save each year. "Pension changes always have small effects at the beginning and grow over time," he said.

John J. Murphy, a pension expert and former executive director of the New York City Employees' Retirement System, said he computed that the authority's pension proposal would have a modest saving at first: $2.25 million in the first year, $4.8 million in the second year and $7.8 million in the third year.

But he said the plan would achieve significant savings, more than $160 million in the first 10 years, with some officials estimating that it would save more than $80 million a year after 20 years.

Mr. Dellaverson said it was important for the authority to try to control its pension outlays even in a year when it had a surplus. The authority's pension outlays for the transit workers have soared to $453 million this year, triple the amount in 2002.

"If you know a tidal wave is coming and you can still play around in the surf because it's not here yet, anyone would think that's foolishness," Mr. Dellaverson said.

That wave, he suggested, is a continued rise in pension costs and the authority's forecast of a $1 billion deficit in 2009.

Mr. Dellaverson said the week of negotiations at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown were unusual because the union made hardly any firm counteroffers. "The longer you wait to start to address the problem," he said, "the more dramatic the changes must be to address them."

He said the union made no new offer countering the authority's pension offers. The union, he said, asked for an 8 percent raise a year, without ever specifying how many years of 8 percent raises it wanted.

He said that just before negotiations broke off on Monday, "We made another offer, even though the union had never countered our earlier offer," he said. "From a tactical standpoint, it's unusual in my little business."

Several union officials said Mr. Toussaint was often reluctant to make a new proposal - for instance, lowering a wage demand - because the clamorous dissidents in the union might seize on such a move to accuse him of selling out.

E. J. McMahon, a budgetary expert at the Manhattan Institute who favors reducing government pension costs, said there were wise and unwise aspects to the authority's focus on pensions in the bargaining.

"On one hand, the transit workers are the hardest union to bring this up with," he said. "On the other hand, this has really put a spotlight on the pension issue."

Now it could be that the MTA really will save $160 million or more in the long run with this pension demand for new TWU workers.

Or it could be the MTA, backed by Mayor Moneybags and Governor Bagman, wanted to take a hard-line with the union on this pension issue, knowing it would force a strike, allow them to break the TWU, and lay the groundwork for much easier future pension concessions from other public employees unions.

I admit to being cynical, but I cannot imagine Bloomberg and Pataki would deliberately provoke a transit strike during the week before Christmas just to break a union and force future pension concessions from public employees unions.

Would they?

UPDATE: As a UFT member, I was particularly offended by UFT Preznit Randi Weingarten's contention that she had won a 25/55 concession from the mayor for UFT members' pensions. Weingarten and her UNITY caucus usually left out that the only concession she had won from Bloomberg was that he would support a commission that would look into trying to change the state law to a 25/55 pension tier for current public employees.

How does that 25/55 pension look now that we know both Bloomberg and Pataki are pushing 62 for the TWU, thus setting the stage for higher retirement ages for the other public employees unions as well?

At least a judge in Pennsylvnia threw "intelligent design" out of the science classroom and back into Bible school where it belongs. From the LA Times:

Federal Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer

A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that it is unconstitutional to compel teachers there to present "intelligent design" as an alternative explanation to evolution because it amounts to establishing religion in public schools.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III wrote that the Dover, Pa. school board cannot require teachers "to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution" or "refer to a religious, alternative theory known as I.D."

Jones' ruling came in Tammy Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School Board, the first legal challenge to teaching intelligent design, which holds that organisms are so complex and highly perfected, a designer must have created them. The designer is not identified in the theory, though some supporters believe it is God.

Kitzmiller, a parent of two Dover high school students, and 10 other individuals challenged a Dover Area School District policy requiring the teaching of "intelligent design" in ninth-grade biology. The parents asserted that the district violated the First Amendment provision prohibiting establishment of religion.

The school board asserted that it was merely attempting to present an alternative to Charles Darwin's widely accepted theory of evolution.

But Judge Jones, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that the board was trying to mask religious teaching in the guise of science. He used unusually strong language for a federal judge, going so far as to excoriate some members of the school board for lying.

"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom, in violation of the Establishment Clause," Jones wrote.

"Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiff's scientific experts testified that theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator," the judge added.

Nice. Judge Jones (a Dubya appointee) called some wingnuts on their religious wingnuttery.

And I agree with the judge.

If you want to teach intelligent design, fine. Teach it in a religious class.

Let's leave "good science" for the science class.

From the Associated Press:

'Everybody treats us like crap'

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

It isn't about money or pensions for Angel Ortiz. It's about the contemptuous glances, angry passenger rants and abusive bosses who rack up discipline slips and are stingy about sick days.

“Everybody treats us like crap all the time. We’re tired of being treated like we’re the garbage of the city,” said Ortiz, 32, standing on the Bronx-Manhattan border Tuesday with hundreds of other striking transit workers underneath an elevated rail line that ran no trains.

It was one of several picket lines Tuesday across New York, where 33,000 transit workers walked off the job amid a bitter dispute over wages and pension benefits for new hires. Transport Workers Union President Roger Toussaint talked about “a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the MTA.”

“Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected,” said Toussaint.

Charles Craft, who works on the tracks of the L subway line in Brooklyn, said there are grueling costs to working in the subways. “You’ve got to deal with the rats. Human feces, urine. You’ve got the third rail,” said Craft, 47, an MTA employee for 18 years. He said some bosses treat his colleagues “like animals.”

As I said in an earlier post, I can sympathize.

I feel underappreciated and disresepcted as a teacher too - by the public, by the politicians, and by the press. I'm pretty sure that's why I got so irate at the concessions UFT preznit Randi Weingarten agreed to in the last teacher's contract.

I already feel put upon by the chancellor and the pinheads at the DOE and now the mayor and the chancellor want even more power over me and my own union leadership is agreeing to it?

Sheesh - this is a bad time to be a union member. While the Tom Friedmans of the world praise the benefits of globalization, the Mike Bloombergs and Jack Welchs of the world are using it as an excuse to squeeze the middle and working classes for all their worth, up the productivity, freeze the wages, and transfer the costs of health care and retirement completely onto workers.

From Newsday:

A Brooklyn judge slapped the transit workers union with a $1 million a day fine and exposed an internal rift, as a mediation session aimed at stopping the walkout was slated for this afternoon.

But any prospects for a quick resolution were tempered by the rhetoric of striking workers, with Union President Roger Toussaint in televised reports saying the strike could stretch on for days.

"I think we will have the growing support of working men and women of New York," said the union leader. "I regret that the MTA, the mayor and the governor did not do their public duty to avoid this crisis."

Toussaint said he does not see the union sending workers back to their duties tomorrow, but maybe they will the next day, he said. He also said he is willing to return to the bargaining table tonight.

Irene Cornell on WCBS-AM 880 reported that TWU Local 100 can only afford two days in fines before they will be bankrupted.

If that's the case, then this strike could be pretty short, especially since the parent union of TWU Local 100 has not sanctioned the strike and won't share in the fines.

So far there have been no new contract negotiations since the union called the strike at 3:00 AM this morning. NYC Educator wrote on his blog that Mayor Bloomberg told New Yorkers today there should be no new negotiations until the TWU ceases its strike.

So how does Bloomberg expect the strike to come to an end if there are no negotiations?

Oh, wait - I bet I know.

Bloomberg figures TWU members should just take whatever the MTA puts on the table because it's "probably a good offer," as he said last week on his radio program.

In other words, Bloomberg believes the TWU should take the crumbs from the power elite's table, stop whining, stop striking, and be glad they're being given crumbs at all.

Boy, this "ownership society" is fun!

So Wolf Blitzer's opens up the 5:00 PM hour of The Situation Room with a medium shot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The traffic on the bridge is moving pretty good, better than it normally would be moving during an early Tuesday rush hour.

Wolf's voiceover?

"The transit strike in New York has created the 'gridlock of all gridlocks'".

Apparently he was quoting something Mayor Moneybags said earlier at a press conference. Nonetheless, in using the juicy Bloomberg quote, Wolf was making it sound like traffic on the bridge actually was "the gridlock of all gridlocks" when the pictures were saying something completely contradictory.

In fact, I've been through most of Midtown today and I have seen very little traffic, let alone the gridlock of all gridlocks.

Frankly, the city feels like a holiday today. There's less traffic, less noise, and fewer people.

I just walked through Times Square on the way home. There was no gridlock.

I also walked by the Lincoln Tunnel earlier today. There was no gridlock.

When I walked to work this morning through Times Square, past the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Penn Stattion and into Chelsea, there was no gridlock.

I'm currently looking out my window on 10th and 11th Avenues and the side streets in the mid-40's here in Midtown West. There is no gridlock.

But that's Wolf Blitzer for you. He never lets reality intrude upon a good voiceover tease.

And that's Mayor Moneybags for you too. He believes the meme should be "the TWU has placed the lives of New Yorkers at stake by creating the 'gridlock of all gridlocks' and they must be forced to pay." So he's doing everything he can to turn public opinion against the union, even lying about the reality of the traffic in the city.

I bet if Mayor Moneybags and Governor Bagman spent less time calling TWU members "murderers" and more time trying to negotiate a fair, reasonable contract or more time treating TWU workers with some respect, the TWU wouldn't have gone on strike at 3:00 AM this morning.

One of the main reasons why the TWU workers are so pissed is that they feel completely disrespected by the powers that be in both the city and the state.

As a New York City public school teacher, I know the feeling.

Every morning I wake up, open a newspaper and read something so vile, so negative, and so inaccurate about teachers that has been said by the mayor, the governor, the chancellor, a journalist, or a editorial writer that I want to tear somebody's throat out with my bare hands.

I bet many of the transit workers feel the same way.

I know that I would be more open to reform and concessions in contract negotiations and less militant if I didn't feel so vilified and disrespected by the mayor, governor, chancellor, et al.

I bet many transit workers feel the same way.

But instead of trying to make the situation better, the mayor continues to throw out accusations and fan the flames of discord, rich, arrogant union-busting billionaire fucker that he is.

Mayor Moneybags and Governor Pataki want to break the transit workers union.

Channel 7 WABC just reported that Governor Pataki wants to see the union "punched" for going on strike this morning.

Mayor Moneybags said a few days ago that he thought the offer the MTA made to the union was "porbably a good offer".

The offer included radical changes to pension and health care plus a 9% raise over three years.

Currently inflation in New York City is running at 5%.

The "raise" wouldn't even cover inflation increases per year.

The MTA claims poverty, saying they can only afford 3% raises as long as they get the union to concede pension and health care benefits changes.

But remember that just last year the MTA was prepared to sell off it's West Side railyards for peanuts to the New York Jets until Cablevision embarrassed them with a much bigger offer that exposed the sweetheart deal between Bloomberg and the Jets owner.

Remember too that the MTA was planning on spending $1 to $2 billion dollars to expand the 7 train six blocks, from 42 Street and 7th Avenue to the Javits Convention Center.

Six blocks! For $1 to $2 billion dollars!

Finally, remember that the MTA has been caught using two sets of financial "books": one set of numbers is used when negotiating with the the TWU or when asking for rates hikes from commuters, another set of books used when handing out bonuses to MTA executives or doing deals with the New York Jets.

Yet the MTA claims it doesn't have any money for its workers.

Never mind that many of the TWU members work in horrendous conditions in the subway. Between the dirt, the rats, the roaches, the noise, the heat, the bad smells, the dirty, stale air, the asbestos, lead, the crime, and the millions of riders who take the subway each day, TWU workers are truly doing a good job in pretty terrible conditions.

Thnk about it. How would you like to work in an environment that is inundated with rats, roaches, noise, heat, bad smells, dirty, stale air, asbestos, lead, and crime and be told by your bosses that you only deserve a 3% raise that doesn't even cover inflation increases, but you must concede pension and health care benefits changes in return?

Wouldn't make you feel to good about yourself or your job, would it?

But the powers that be in New York City and New York State don't care about TWU members.

The reality is, neither Mayor Moneybags nor Governor Pataki care about the TWU members or working class and middle class Americans in general.

This battle with the TWU is just another episode in the class war against working and middle class Americans so that the investment class can increase their profit margins and GOP-sponsored tax breaks.

Pataki wants to see the union "punched" so that the State and the City can break other unions, including the the police, fire, and teachers unions, in the future.

This is why working class and middle class Americans must support the TWU in its battle with the MTA, the governor, and the mayor.

I don't know how this strike is going to play out or how it's going to end. I suspect Bloomberg and Pataki are going to hold to a hard line until they start hearing from small and large business leaders around the city about how much money is being lost. I don't know if that will be enough to get the MTA to blink or if Bloomberg and Pataki will try to break the union the way Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union.

I do know that the outcome of this strike will affect me as a UFT member.

I also know that if the TWU is broken by the mayor and governor, my own union will be broken next.

This is why I must support the TWU in their strike and why all union members and working class and middle class Americans should support the TWU over the entreched power elite.

Boy oh boy was Bush desperate to kill the domestic spying story from being published. Jonathan Alter reports tonight in NEWSWEEK that Bush brought both the publisher and the editor of the NY Times into the Oval Office last week to try and get them to stop publishing the domestic spying story:

Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

...

Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat in Cuba.

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.

Jesus Christ, the preznit is a fucking power-mad crazy person.

He could have gotten all the wiretaps he wanted throught the FISA court, but instead he insisted on authorizing illegal wiretaps that he now claims were legal because of the war powers granted to him by Congress to fight the War on Terror.

Why the fuck did he do this? What was the point?

To prove what a big man he is? To make Dick Cheney, who himself loves living in the shadows, happy?

And how do these illegal wiretaps make us safer in the War on Terror when they could have been gotten legally?

I just don't understand the rationale behind this.

But I guess I'm not the only one.

I wonder if the truth will ever come out about this or if the GOP controlled Congress will whitewash these illegal acts into patriotism and honest criticism into treason?

Normally I watch Imus in the Morning on MSNBC but Imus is on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so I turned to The Today Show just to see what was on.

Guess what story they led with over at The Today Show?

The domestic spying story.

First, Katie interviewed Attorney General Abu Gonzalez from the White House on the story. Gonzalez said the war authorization voted upon by Congress gave the preznit authorization to spy without court warrants.

Then David Gregory interviewed Russ Feingold. Feingold said the preznit could have gotten these warrants very easily from the FISA court or even have begun wiretapping before he got a warrant and then gone to the FISA court within 72 hours to get legal authorization. He didn't understand why the preznit broke the law when he could have easily gotten these wiretaps within the law.

Even Pumpkinhead Russert seemed to think the preznit is trying to expand his powers by trying to spy outside the law rather than go through the ordinary legal procedures in order to eavesdrop on suspects.

They did sort of mention his speech from last night on The Today Show, but most of the morning was given over to the domestic spying story.

So much for Bush grabbing back the news cycle, eh?

Obviously the White House thought they were going to be taking a victory lap all weekend over the Iraq elections.

Instead they had to spend the last 48 hours trying to quell the domestic spying controversy.

So tonight Bush gives his "Mistakes Were made in Iraq" speech in order to take back the news cycle from the NSA scandal.

Rove knows the news media will fall all over itself to give the preznit credit for admitting mistakes in Iraq, especially tomorrow morning on the news shows.

Even tonight, the coverage of the speech seems fairly favorable to the preznit.

But all of the talking heads keep noting about how the Iraqis must settle their constitutional problems in the next four months or face chaos in the body politic. The Sunnis must be brought into the process before they all turn to the insurgency for power.

And Pumpkinhead Russert told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC tonight that both Republican and Democratic politicians are telling him they are worried because both the Kurdish and the Shiite militias are stronger than the national Iraqi army.

Doesn't sound like a recipe for political success despite what the preznit says.

Tonight he said America has a new democratic ally in the Middle East in Iraq.

The reality is, after the a Shiite dominated government takes over, Iran has a new ally in the Middle East.

What we've got is trouble that no four speeches in one week can fix.

But why should the preznit and the rest of his administration's allies allow reality to intrude upon their effective speechifying?

This LA Times editorial criticizing the preznit's approval of domestic spying hits all the right notes for me:

Bigger brother

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CAVALIER on Friday night when he told Jim Lehrer on PBS that a report about the National Security Agency eavesdropping on U.S. citizens was "not the main story of the day." He is entitled to his own news judgment, but it reveals a lot about his willingness to disregard constitutional safeguards and civil liberties while pursuing the war on terrorism. To the rest of us, the revelation in the New York Times that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on people within the United States without judicial warrants was stunning. In one of the more egregious cases of governmental overreach in the aftermath of 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the monitoring, without any judicial oversight, of international phone calls and e-mail messages from the United States.

The news came on the same day that Congress voted not to extend controversial aspects of the soon-to-expire Patriot Act, and on the heels of disturbing reports that the Pentagon's shadowy Counterintelligence Field Activity office has been keeping tabs on domestic antiwar groups, including monitoring Quaker meetings, under the guise of protecting military installations. The program is reminiscent of official efforts to spy on antiwar groups in the 1960s.

The scandalous abuse of Americans' civil liberties in that period led in the 1970s to a new set of laws aimed at curtailing domestic espionage by intelligence agencies. To balance national security needs with our constitutional liberties, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act created secret "FISA" courts in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies can covertly obtain warrants to eavesdrop on suspected spies (now terrorists too) in the United States. These courts are generally efficient and deferential to the government. Yet the Bush administration still opted to cut them out of the process in some cases; warrants are still sought to intercept all communications that took place entirely within the United States.

Some critics say the FISA courts are too slow to issue decisions in an environment in which every minute counts, and that Cold War laws are ill-suited for a war on amorphous terrorist cells. If that's the case, the administration and Congress should have worked together to alter the courts' procedures or to amend the law. Instead, the White House unilaterally opted to exempt much of its antiterrorism efforts from any kind of judicial oversight — just as it tried doing with its policies regarding detainees.

The Supreme Court has already reined in the executive branch on that score, and the NSA's eavesdropping, arguably a violation of both the law and the Constitution, may lead to even greater legal woes for the president. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called reports of the NSA practices clearly unacceptable and said he would hold hearings early next year. There will be plenty to ask about.

One early defense of the program is a claim by the administration that it had to be implemented quietly — the president authorized it in a classified order — because otherwise terrorists would be alerted to its existence and work to evade it. But those same suspected terrorists would have already known that they might be wiretapped with the aid of a secret warrant. What is the difference?

Last week may come to be seen as a tipping point in the public's attitude, one that will cause the administration to reverse its encroachment on rights in the name of security. The report of the NSA's unsupervised eavesdropping program helped defeat an extension of certain controversial provisions of the Patriot Act in the Senate on Friday.

Now even sympathetic lawmakers can be expected to view the Patriot Act more skeptically. The revelations about the NSA raise two fundamental questions about the administration's rationale for increased powers: If it's already spying on its own citizens, then why does it need the Patriot Act? Alternatively, if it's already spying on its own citizens, how can it be trusted with the Patriot Act? This administration has yet to fully acknowledge that with greater powers must come greater accountability.

As for the Defense Department's counterterrorism database, the Pentagon was forced on Thursday to acknowledge that it hadn't followed its own guidelines requiring the deletion of information on American citizens who clearly don't pose a security risk. Imagine that: a domestic military intelligence program that failed to abide by its own safeguards.

Given this administration's history, none of these developments is especially surprising. But the latest revelations may serve as a timely reminder of why the American constitutional system requires the judiciary — the third branch of government — to review the actions of the executive branch when necessary to protect the people's liberty.

This preznit believes he is above the law. For the first five years of George Bush's administration, this Congress has abdicated its oversight duties of the executive branch, consistently putting "elephant" above "flag" on matters of both domestic and international concern.

Now we can see the price the nation is paying for one party GOP rule.

A war of choice in Iraq that was ill-conceived, badly planned, and poorly executed that has left the United States more vulnerable in Bush's "War on Terror," not less vulnerable.

An anti-terrorism policy that includes "rendering" terror suspects to countries abroad to be interrogated (i.e., tortured), holding "terror suspects" in perpetuity without charges being filed against them, and using "enhanced interrogation techniques" against terror suspects, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, beatings, inducing claustrophobia, and using electric shock on genitals.

A federal government that couldn't respond to the first national crisis in the post 9/11 world when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and killed hundreds of people.

This administration does whatever it wants and rarely if ever pays a political price for its misteps, mistakes, or even crimes. They simply spin their way out of whatever controversy they're in and the send their GOP apologists and party hacks out to hit the TV circuit to spread talking points which a compliant news media is happy to disseminate and a willing public is even happier to lap up.

Meanwhile the opposition party sits by offering mild protest or, more often than not, attempts to co-opt "centrist" positions that stand for nothing and appeal to no one in the electorate except for a few Democratic Leadership Council appartachiks.

And the result has been a Bush administration that has run rampant over the Constitution and the Separation of Powers doctrine.

Dana Milbank reports in today's Washington Post that Democrats and even some Republicans believe the GOP-controlled Congress has done a piss-poor job of carrying out its oversight responsibilities over the administration:

In an interview last week, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said "it's a fair comment" that the GOP-controlled Congress has done insufficient oversight and "ought to be" doing more.

"Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own," said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. "I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches."

Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.

Some experts on Congress say that the legislative branch has shed much of its oversight authority because of a combination of aggressive actions by the Bush administration, acquiescence by congressional leaders, and political demands that keep lawmakers out of Washington more than before.

"I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not," said Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, told reporters this month: "It has basically lost the war-making power. The real debates on budget occur not in Congress but in the Office of Management and Budget. . . . When you come into session Tuesday afternoon and leave Thursday afternoon, you simply do not have time for oversight or deliberation."

...

"The House has absolutely zero oversight. They just don't engage in that," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week.

Specifically, Democrats list 14 areas where the GOP majority has "failed to investigate" the administration, including the role of senior officials in the abuse of detainees; leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; the role of Vice President Cheney's office in awarding contracts to Cheney's former employer, Halliburton; the White House's withholding from Congress the cost of a Medicare prescription drug plan; the administration's relationship with Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi; and the influence of corporate interests on energy policy, environmental regulation and tobacco policy.

Meanwhile, the House ethics committee has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite outside investigations involving, among others, Cunningham and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

...

Democrats, who have tried to get Davis to subpoena the White House for Katrina documents, are not impressed. "Republicans have made a mockery of oversight," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the committee's ranking Democrat. "There was nothing too small to be investigated in the Clinton administration and there's nothing so big that it can't be ignored in the Bush administration."

Simply put, the Republican Party, led by Karl Rove, Tom Delay and Denny Hastert, has always put "elephant" over "flag" and forced Congress to abdicate its oversight responsibilities over the administration, the media abdicated its own oversight responsibilties in the horrific aftermath of 9/11, consistently giving the administration the benefit of the doubt on every issue that arose, especially in the run-up to the Iraq war, and the public allowed itself to be swayed by this administration's skillful use of PR and propaganda.

The result is an imperial president who clearly thinks he can break the law.

Just like Nixon. Remember his famous quote: "If the president does it, it's not illegal"?

George W. Bush seems to hold to the same philosophy.

Now its time for this GOP Congress to act like the patriots they claim to be and hold King George to the rule of law.

It's also time for the media to call the administration on its bullshit and the president on his les.

And most of all, its time for the American people to realize that just because this preznit says something is true doesn't make it so.

To the contrary, given his track record, if this preznit says something's true, you know he's lying.

More imperial presidency stuff from our Special Education Preznit. During his radio address today, he admitted he personally approved the use of illegal wiretaps in order to keep us safe in the War on Terror:

Bush Acknowledges Approving Eavesdropping

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program.

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.

"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.

Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency violates civil liberties.

Defending the program, Bush said in his address that it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

He said the program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated.

Appearing angry at times during his eight-minute address, Bush left no doubt that he will continue authorizing the program.

"I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups," he said.

Well, I sure am relieved to know that the preznit believes these illegal wiretaps are "crucial to national security" and "critical to saving American lives."

I also am reassured by the preznit's assurances that the intelligence officers involved in the monitoring "receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated."

And I am especially confident that since we are only monitoring people who have been determined to have a "clear link" to Al Qaeda that we're only wiretapping truly bad guys.

NOT!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Vice Preznit of Terror, Dick Cheney, assure us that Saddam had clear ties to Al Qaeda?

Does anyone really have any confidence in Bush administration claims that they use "fresh threat assessments" every 45 days to make sure they are only monitoring true threats to national security?

I mean, nearly every threat assessment we have gotten from this administration both pre and post 9/11 has been severely flawed, to say the least.

Remember how the Bushies said Al Qaeda was going to blow up the Citicorp building last summer?

Remember how that threat assessment turned out to be based on both faulty and outdated intelligence?

Remember how the more cynical among us suspected the Citicorp/Al Qaeda threat had been divulged to the press right after the Democratic National Convention for "political reasons"?

How much do you want to make a bet that Bush has personally authorized wirtetapping for "political" reasons? How much do you want to bet that the more the press and the Senate look into this, the more they'll find Cheney, Libby, Rove et al. behind the wiretapping and the more they'll notice that some of the people and/or groups monitored were "peace groups" or other opponents of the preznit's policies who the administration had somehow construed to be threats to "national security"?

Kinda like how a Quaker peace group in Florida was monitored and spyed upon by the Defense Department because somebody in the Pentagon saw the peace activist group as a "threat" to national security. Lisa Myers of NBC News broke that story this week, and I think it's no coincidence that the NSA spying story and the Defense Department spying story broke in the news the same week.

So will Arlen Specter be true to his word and hold hearings into this Orwellian spying program personally authorized by our preznit? Or will Specter succumb to political pressure and hold a Pat Roberts kind of whitewash that will allow administration apologists to go onto the talk show circuit and explain away the illegalities by saying a Senate committtee looked into them and there was nothing there?

I'm betting on #2.

I am hoping, however, that maybe after November 2006, a Democratic House or Senate could get around to # 1.

And then we could have some frogmarching.

I was wondering why the CIA leak grand jury didn't meet yesterday in Washington. Turns out the Special Prosecutor was busy indicting former Hollinger CEO Conrad Black on additional charges. Here's the catch from the Associated Press:

CHICAGO Dec 15, 2005 — Former newspaper mogul Conrad Black was indicted by federal prosecutors Thursday on additional charges that include racketeering and obstruction of justice.

The new charges came two weeks after Black pleaded not guilty to fraud charges in connection with the alleged looting of more than $80 million from the Hollinger International Inc. newspaper empire he once controlled.

The charges were brought in an indictment returned Thursday by a federal grand jury in Chicago and announced by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Black's former associate, John Boultbee, also faces one new count of wire fraud in addition to the eight fraud counts he was charged with last month. Charges brought against co-defendants Peter Atkinson, Mark Kipnis and The Ravelston Corp. Ltd. remained unchanged.

The expanded indictment against Black adds four new charges against him one count each of racketeering, obstruction of justice, money laundering and wire fraud in addition to the eight counts of mail fraud and wire fraud he was charged with on Nov. 17.

The obstruction count alleges that he illegally removed more than a dozen boxes of documents from his companies' offices in Toronto last spring.

So what did Patrick Fitzgerald delay by canceling the CIA leak grand jury on Wednesday? According to Rawstory.com

Late Tuesday evening, RAW STORY received word from two attorneys close to the CIA leak case that Patrick Fitzgerald intended to meet with the grand jury Wednesday morning to present the recently obtained sworn testimony from Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, and Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak. Attorneys say Fitzgerald still intends to brief the grand jury on these matters.

I'm sure Fitz will be back in Washington soon enough to brief the grand jury and decide whether he is going to indict Karl Rove on false statements, perjury and/or obstruction of justice charges in the case.

According to Thomas DeFrank of the NY Daily News

Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove escaped indictment but is still under active investigation by Fitzgerald.

Some Rove allies now fear he may be in more legal jeopardy than he was when Libby was charged.

Meanwhile in other CIA leak news, I suppose you heard that Bob Novak said in a speech on Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina that he believes Preznit Bush knows who first leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Novak:

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

After the Novak revelation, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent the White House a letter asking the preznit to "clear up this matter quickly...unlike Mr. Novak, who can claim an interest in maintaining the confidentiality of his sources, there is no similar privilege arguably preventing you from sharing such information."

Today, the White House pushed back against Novak with White House press secretary Scottie McClellan saying "I don't know what he's (Novak's) basing it on."

Right.

Like the preznit didn't know pretty early on that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity and/or name to members of the media.

The good news is, the preznit can no longer plead "no comment" to CIA leak questions from the press by saying that he cannot comment on an ongoing investigation.

Becuase Georgie Boy told Britt Hume on FOX News yesterday that he thought Tom Delay was innocent of the money laundering and conspiracy charges brought by DA Ronnie Earle in Texas.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Tom Delay case "ongoing"? And didn't Bushie "comment" on it?

If I were David Gregory of NBC News and Terry Moran of ABC News, I'd be scribbling down my CIA leak case questions right now.

Should be a nice Fitzmas gift for the many Plameolgists out there to ask schmucko a few CIA leak questions at the next Q & A and insist on a straight answer instead of accepting that "can't comment on an ongoing investigation" bullshit.

Mayor Bloomberg, who has no official role in the neogtiations between the Transit Workers Union and the MTA, stuck his nose into the impasse between the two sides the other day on his radio program. Here's the story from the Daily News:

The contract between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the more than 33,000 bus and subway workers expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Workers have authorized a strike, which would be illegal under the state's Taylor Law and would mean huge fines.

...

The daily financial toll on the city would be extreme, according to the city, with businesses suffering loses between $440 million and $660 million.

The city would lose an estimated $12 million in tax revenues, and police would have to spend $10 million on overtime.

City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo told reporters the city "will take appropriate steps to recoup its losses" from the union.

The union charges the MTA has a year-end surplus of $1 billion. But Mayor Bloomberg said on his Friday radio show that the extra money was "mythical."

Toussaint warned the mayor to butt out. "Mayor Bloomberg is not a participant in these negotiations and it should stay that way," he said.

That's our Mayor, sticking his muppet mug into negotiations that he's not a part of in order to make a political point, which is: the City and the State has no money for cops, fire personnel, nurses, teachers, or transit workers.

Of course, if you're a multi-billion dollar corporation threatening to move from downtown to New Jersey, then the City and State's got millions in tax breaks for you.

And if you're a billionaire owner of Johnson & Johnson and you want a billion dollar stadium built for you on the West Side, then the City and State's got millions in tax breaks for you and millions more in "construction costs."

And if you're a real estate mogul who wants to construct more than a dozen luxury buildings over in Brooklyn along with a sports arena for the New Jersey Nets, then the City and State's got millions in tax breaks for you and millions more in "construction costs."

But if you're just a poor schlub who takes his or her lunch pail to your police, fire department, nursing, teaching, or transit job, the City and State's got no money for you.

In fact, if you're a poor schlub working a City or State job, not only does the City and State not have money for you, they need money from you.

So you schlubs need to up your productivity. Grab a broom and sweep that train as well as drive it. Grab a mop and clean that bathroom next to your classroom. And you need to pay 2% or more of your "raise" to your health care, despite the fact that you work in mostly horrendous conditions, especially if you're working in the NYC subway system.

Yup, that's the Mayor of Money for you. An arrogant, wealthy bully who has no idea what it's like to struggle to make a living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

So here's to Roger Toussaint for telling the mayor to butt his muppet mug out of the negotiations and mind his business.

Had that been me, I would have told the mayor to shut his fucking muppet mug up. But I'll take someone telling him to "butt out" too.

Having just watched the United Federation of Teachers and it's "preznit" Randi Weingarten sell my union down the river in contract negotiations with the city, I am heartened by the aggressive tactics of the TWU. Here's a fine piece from Ray Sanchez of Newsday on the looming strike:

A quarter century ago, on April Fools' Day, the nation's largest bus and subway system screeched to a halt.

Thousands of subway station entrances were roped off during an illegal strike. Operators finished their runs, discharged stragglers and delivered more than 6,400 littered subway cars back to train yards. Depots throughout the city filled with 4,550 dark, empty buses. As Ed Koch, then mayor, put it, the unthinkable had happened.

...

Over the weekend, thousands of Transport Workers Union Local 100 members voted to authorize union leaders to strike Friday if no agreement is reached on a new contract. The union represents nearly 34,000 bus and subway workers, whose last strike was in 1980.

The expected vote came days after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which blames health and pension costs for a nearly $1 billion deficit projected for 2009, proposed to have new employees wait until age 62 to qualify for a full pension. Current workers get one at 55.

...

The MTA also wants new employees to pay 2 percent of their wages toward health premiums, and for current workers to pay higher co-payments for doctors' visits and prescription drugs.

Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents about 4,000 MTA workers, said the authority's current demands for new employees could lead to another walkout. Hanley was a newly hired bus driver in 1978, when he said he earned a dollar an hour less than workers hired for the same job under the previous contract.

"If it doesn't create a strike now, it certainly would in the future," said Hanley of the MTA's demands for new hires. "You will have new hires coming on that are just going to hate the union and the company. It could explode."

Another important factor in the current talks is workers' lack of trust in the authority, where disciplinary rules have been described as petty and punitive.

"I used to tell people at the Transit Authority, I remember when this was a bus company," said Hanley, another 1980 strike survivor. "Now it's a paper factory. People weren't getting written up and disciplined the way they are now."

The workforce enjoyed a different relationship with management before and during the last strike.

"There was some level of respect by management for the union and for the workers," Hanley said. "Now it's run like a military state. There is absolutely no compassion."

Joshua Freeman, a labor historian at the City University of New York, said MTA giveback demands plus the union's militant history couple to make a strike a real possibility.

"The very nature of brinkmanship is sometimes you fall off the edge, even if you don't flinch," he said. "But this is not late in the game by standards of these negotiations, which tend to always be resolved at the very last minute."

Basil Patterson, a TWU negotiator in the 2002 contract, said the state's Taylor Law, which bars public employees from striking, would not stop a walkout.

"There's a very ugly mood among the workers," he said. "They're infuriated by the management offer. You can push workers to the point where they say, 'The hell with it' -- that's what you have to worry about."

When bus and subway workers shut down the system for 11 days in 1980, they suffered huge financial penalties. The union was fined $1 million. Each union member had to pay two days' salary for every day on strike, erasing some of the gains they had won in the new contract.

"Workers didn't know the Taylor Law was as bad as it was," McAnanama said. "It hurt when they took out the fines. After the strike, most bosses threw us a little overtime here and there. They didn't want a disgruntled workforce."

With days to the contract deadline, management is dealing with exactly that -- a disgruntled workforce.

As a New York City schoolteacher, I know what it's like to be a member of a disgruntled workforce.

The only difference between the teachers and the subway workers is that teachers are a bunch of sheep who are afraid to stand up for their labor rights or fight for a fair contract. So instead of pushing the mayor, the UFT conceded 50 years of hard-won rights for a bullshit raise that we still actually haven't been paid yet.

I wish my union membership was as tough in negotiations as the TWU has been. I know that the TWU leadership was ready to sell out the membership, but the rank and file made it clear they would not accept a bad contract. So the leadership went back to the table instead of settling for less.

This is what the teachers should have done. We should have told Randi Weingarten and the rest of her UNITY hacks we would not be sold down the river. But instead, like the sheep we are, we allowed our union leadership to be taken to the cleaners by the mayor and we conceded 50 years of hard-won rights for 14%.

Shame on Randi, shame on UNITY, shame on the UFT membership.

And good luck to the TWU.

Something is rotten in Viveca's Novak's story. She says she can't remember when she told Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, that Rove was Cooper's source. Yet in her first-person mea culpa in TIME today she says:

Here's what happened. Toward the end of one of our meetings, I remember Luskin looking at me and saying something to the effect of "Karl doesn't have a Cooper problem. He was not a source for Matt." I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, "Are you sure about that? That's not what I hear around TIME." He looked surprised and very serious. "There's nothing in the phone logs," he said. In the course of the investigation, the logs of all Rove's calls around the July 2003 time period--when two stories, including Matt's, were published mentioning that Plame was Wilson's wife--had been combed, and Luskin was telling me there were no references to Matt. (Cooper called via the White House switchboard, which may be why there is no record.)

I was taken aback that he seemed so surprised. I had been pushing back against what I thought was his attempt to lead me astray. I hadn't believed that I was disclosing anything he didn't already know. Maybe this was a feint. Maybe his client was lying to him. But at any rate, I immediately felt uncomfortable. I hadn't intended to tip Luskin off to anything. I was supposed to be the information gatherer. It's true that reporters and sources often trade information, but that's not what this was about. If I could have a do-over, I would have kept my mouth shut; since I didn't, I wish I had told my bureau chief about the exchange. Luskin walked me to my car and said something like, "Thank you. This is important."

Okay, so she knows she's fucked up by telling Luskin that Rove was Cooper's source. It's a major fuck-up, actually, because Cooper and TIME are suing trying to keep him from having to testify to Fitzgerald about who Cooper's source is, yet Novak has just blabbed it over Fuzzy Navels with Rove's lawyer. You'd think she'd remember a major fuck-up like that, especially since she didn't tell anybody else about it and was hiding in from her editors at TIME. I mean, she knows if she tells anybody else what she told Luskin they'll look at her like she's an idiot. Which she is.

But can she remember the exact day she told Luskin this info that Luskin himself told her "is important"?

Nope.

Fitzgerald wanted to know when this conversation occurred. At that point I had found calendar entries showing that Luskin and I had met in January and in May. Since I couldn't remember exactly how the conversation had developed, I wasn't sure. I guessed it was more likely May.

...

A new meeting with Fitzgerald was arranged for Dec. 8. Leaks about my role began appearing in the papers, some of them closer to the mark than others. They all made me feel physically ill. Fitzgerald had asked that I check a couple of dates in my calendar for meetings with Luskin. One of them, March 1, 2004, checked out. I hadn't found that one in my first search because I had erroneously entered it as occurring at 5 a.m., not 5 p.m.

When Fitzgerald and I met last Thursday, along with another lawyer from his team, my attorney, a lawyer from Time Inc. and the court reporter, he was more focused. The problem with the new March date was that now I was even more confused--previously I had to try to remember if the key conversation had occurred in January or May, and I thought it was more likely May. But March was close enough to May that I really didn't know. "I don't remember" is an answer that prosecutors are used to hearing, but I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when.

January, March, May...she's not sure when she gossiped info to Luskin that is so important that it may provide Karl Rove with a "Get out of jail" card.

Yet she remembers knowing how big a fuck-up she had made when she divulged Rove was Cooper's source to Luskin.

How is it she can remember making a major fuck-up in the case by talking out of school but can't remember what month she made the fuck-up? I mean, there's a big difference between January and May!

I don't believe Novak's story here. She's lying about something or leaving something out, most likely because if she tells the whole truth she'll look even dumber than she already does in this case. I'm not saying she has Judy Miller complicity in this case, but she's as full of shit as Bob Woodward, the man who Novak wrote an article about in TIME after Woodward testified to the CIA leak grand jury that he too had been leaked Valerie Plame's identity by a senior administration official.

Viveca Novak and Bob Woodward - two lying liars who belong to the same lying pea pod.

TIME reporter Viveca Novak's first person account of her involvement in the CIA leak case went up on the TIME website today.

After reading through it and the accompanying story by Richard Lacayo in TIME, I have to say that I am appalled by Viveca Novak's behavior in this case and believe she should be fired from her job at TIME and hounded out of the news business.

Just like Judy Miller and Bob Woodward.

Novak not only told Karl Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, that people at TIME knew that Rove was Cooper's source in 2003 yet failed to tell her editors at TIME that she had let the cat out of the bag, but she spoke to Patrick Fitzgerald BEFORE telling her editors at TIME about her involvement, she wrote an article about Bob Woodward's testimony before the CIA leak grand jury WHILE she herself was about to give testimony to Fitzgerald and never alerted anybody to this possible conflict of interest and only divulged her problem to her editors when Fiztgerald came back to say he wanted her to officially be deposed in the case.

Viveca Novak has, shall we say, a credibility problem.

Here's what Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher has to say about her:

(December 11, 2005) -- Where will it end, and when will reporters pay with their jobs? First we learn that Bob Woodward failed to tell his editor for years about his role in the Plame/CIA leak case. Today, we find out that Time reporter Viveca Novak not only kept her editors in the dark about her own involvement, but even had a two-hour chat with the special prosecutor about it well before telling her superiors.

...

The most amazing revelation is that in late-October, long after she blundered in telling Luskin that the word around Time (obviously a reference to Cooper) was that Rove had a Plame problem, the lawyer informed her that the special prosecutor might want to speak to her. Does she tell her editor? No.

Later Luskin tells her that Fitzgerald does indeed want to grill her, although perhaps not under oath just yet. She hires a high-level lawyer. Surely she tells her editor now? Au contraire.

Then, on Nov. 10, she meets with Fitzgerald for two hours to discuss the conversations with Luskin. Of course she tells her editor after that? Sadly, no.

Finally, on Nov. 18, her lawyer calls to inform her that Fitzgerald does indeed want her to testify under oath. “I realized that I now needed to share this information with Jay Carney, our Washington bureau chief,” she writes online today. “On Sunday, Nov. 20, I drove over to his house to tell him. He then called Jim Kelly, the managing editor. Nobody was happy about it, least of all me.”

Oh gosh, imagine that.

Then, as she describes the substance of what she revealed (or, mainly, her struggles to recall any specifics), one has to wonder about her journalistic capabilities.

The first red flag, to repeat, is telling Luskin anything about what anyone knew at Time about her client and this incredibly sensitive case.

Then there’s the question of how many times she talked to Luskin about it. Well, she has some calendar entries but they “weren’t entirely reliable.” She didn’t take any notes, during or even after the meetings. No wonder she cannot pinpoint the meeting when she made the all-important disclosure that supposedly jogged poor Karl’s memory about his Cooper chat. When she talks to Fitzgerald she can only venture a wild guess, as she admits.

Then Fitzgerald asks her about specific dates. Lo and behold, she turns to her calendar again and one of Fitz's ideas, March 1, 2004, checks out. Here’s her explanation: “I hadn't found that one in my first search because I had erroneously entered it as occurring at 5 a.m., not 5 p.m.”

Reminder: This is a Time magazine reporter and book author.

Now, she admits, this made her feel physically ill in contemplating her upcoming testimony under oath, and no wonder: “The problem with the new March date was that now I was even more confused--previously I had to try to remember if the key conversation had occurred in January or May, and I thought it was more likely May. But March was close enough to May that I really didn't know. ‘I don't remember’ is an answer that prosecutors are used to hearing, but I was mortified about how little I could recall of what occurred when.”

At one point in the piece, Novak says she wishes she could have a “do over,” and that she had told her bureau chief about all this earlier. Time magazine: Your move.

According to the TIME website, TIME and Viveca Novak have mutually agreed to send Novak on a "leave of absence."

What they should do is send her to journalism Siberia along with Judy "Everybody got it wrong" Miller and Bob "Can't lose my access to Cheney, Rummy et al." Woodward.

Jesus, what a bunch of lying, weasly screwheads.

Remember when Republicans were crowing how Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro was going to take it to Hillary Clinton in her Senate reelection bid?

Turns out not so much. From the Daily News:

Jeanine Pirro is expected to quit her bid to unseat Sen. Hillary Clinton as early as tomorrow, prematurely ending what had been billed as one of the nation's marquee races.

Just a few months ago, the smart, aggressive and charming Westchester district attorney was the darling of a Republican Party convinced she was the right candidate who - even if she couldn't beat Clinton - could at least slice into her high approval ratings.

But now, Pirro, 54, is being written off as the first political roadkill of the 2006 election season. And Clinton never even had to throw a punch.

What happened?

"She's been hurt by a lack of money and a campaign that from the beginning has been sputtering at best," said Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff.

Pirro, he said, also fell into the trap of making a central issue of her campaign that Clinton harbors presidential ambitions and won't finish a second term, a claim that, even if true, doesn't seem to matter much to most New Yorkers.

GOP insiders said they expect her to toss in the towel tomorrow when Republican leaders meet in Albany to gear up for next year's elections, which also feature races for governor, state attorney general, Congress and all 212 state lawmakers.

Officially, her campaign says Pirro has no plans to quit, but sources said she will be "drafted" to run for attorney general, a job for which many of her backers say she is well qualified given her background as a prosecutor and former judge.

It's the same job some say she should have gone for in the first place. The move to pull Pirro out of the Senate bid might be a signal that the state GOP will concentrate instead on the governor's race and boosting Pirro for attorney general. A potential candidate to replace Pirro is former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, a relative unknown to most New Yorkers.

Sources close to the Pirro camp said Clinton's popularity was not her only obstacle. Besides her fund-raising problem, Pirro also was hurt by the media spotlight on her husband, Al Pirro, a lobbyist who did prison time for tax evasion.

She also didn't help her own cause with an embarrassing campaign launch when she went speechless before cameras for 32 seconds, then asked where the missing page of her speech was.

Pirro's friend Bill O'Shaughnessy, owner of Westchester radio station WVOX, blamed an aggressive media and a "good ol' boys" network that never gave her a chance. "This is like the gal who got all dressed up for the ball but never got a chance to go on the dance floor to hear the orchestra," he said.

Pirro is "smart" and "charming"? Really?

Frankly, she came across as stupid, petulant, and corrupt in her Senate campaign. And the fact that her husband, Al, is a Gambino Family associate didn't help sell the public on Pirro's trustworthiness or honesty.

Oh, well. I guess the media isn't going to get the "catfight" they wanted and the GOP isn't going to get the Hillary-stopper they wanted . Remember how the Clinton/Pirro match-up got billed in this story from the Daily News on January 27, 2005?

When Sen. Hillary Clinton runs for reelection in 2006, her opponent might just be another high-profile attorney from Westchester.

Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro is considering challenging the former First Lady, according to political insiders.

The GOP crimefighter, who is running for reelection this year, is not publicly discussing plans for higher office.

But Pirro has a dizzying fund-raising schedule and the enthusiastic backing of Gov. Pataki. "We love Jeanine," said a source in Pataki's camp.

Sources say it is becoming less likely by the day that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who may be eying the White House, will challenge Clinton for the Senate seat.

A Clinton-Pirro contest has the makings of a marquee matchup between two controversial and ambitious women.

"This wouldn't be just a battle," longtime Pirro friend and Westchester radio station owner Bill O'Shaughnessy told the Daily News. "It would be a catfight, and my money would be on Jeanine."

"There'll be more interest in this than in 'Desperate Housewives,'" he added.

So now if the media wants to see a Desperate Housewives episode, they'll have to turn on TV.

I'm glad Pirro's candidacy imploded under her own incompetency and charmlessness. Now the wankers at the Daily News, Post, and Times won't get to write their "catfight" stories this election season.

But after watching the creepy Pirro for a few months during her candidacy, I'm also glad she's pulling out simply because she seems like an arrogant, privileged fuckhead.

And we already have enough arrogant, privileged fuckheads elected in New York.

I woke up a little groggy and cranky today. The first piece of news I saw was how Bush's "poll numbers are rebounding," at least according to the Associated Press which has him at 42% approval now, up from 35%.

The way MSNBC and the AP reported the news like a major seismic shift in public opinion made me even crankier and groggier (if that's a word!!!) than before.

Since when is 42% approval good news? I mean, could Bush actually bottom out any lower than 35-37% anyway?

So I just started the day feeling pissed, annd then I saw this story on Bloomberg (via Firedoglake) which absolutely warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart:

Abramoff's Secrets, Claims on Lawmakers May Start Emerging Soon

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- For years, lobbyist Jack Abramoff wined and dined U.S. lawmakers, spreading donations and earning good will. Now, facing bribery accusations, he may be ready to share his Capitol Hill confidences with Justice Department investigators.

``The prosecutors are talking to Abramoff's lawyers because they want to get his cooperation in the prosecution of members of Congress, I'm sure,'' said John Kotelly, who prosecuted one of six congressmen convicted in the Abscam political corruption case in the 1980s. The question is what Abramoff has to offer and how much U.S. attorneys might give up in terms of jail time, he said. ``It's going to be kind of a dance between the two.''

Abramoff will have to implicate a high-ranking political figure to win any significant reduction in a potential prison sentence, former prosecutors said. His connections extend throughout Congress, including to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff ``one of my closest and dearest friends.'' DeLay cut off contact with Abramoff and denied wrongdoing after a report that he improperly accepted travel from the lobbyist.

Abramoff's former partner, one-time DeLay aide Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty on Nov. 21 to conspiring to corrupt public officials and defraud clients out of millions of dollars. Scanlon, 35, is cooperating with investigators, and former prosecutors such as Kotelly say that Abramoff, 46, is probably considering doing the same.

Trial Date

The pressure may be mounting as Abramoff faces a Jan. 9 trial date on a separate set of fraud charges connected to a business deal in Florida. Agreeing to cooperate with the Justice Department in the Washington case might allow him to resolve the Florida charges as well.

Abramoff's co-defendant in Florida, Adam Kidan, may plead guilty next week after the judge in the case scheduled a change- of-plea hearing for Dec. 15. That may also increase the likelihood of a deal with Abramoff.

Justice Department spokesman Paul Bresson declined comment. Abramoff representative Andrew Blum, who speaks on behalf of the lobbyist's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also declined to respond.

The case has already caused political fallout. Democrats are using the links between Abramoff and lawmakers such as DeLay, 58, as a basis for charges that Republicans have created a ``culture of corruption.''

Overcharging Tribes

Abramoff and Scanlon overcharged casino-owning Indian-tribe clients and split tens of millions of dollars in profits, according to e-mails and documents released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Scanlon's plea agreement mentions attempts to influence lawmakers through gifts and trips such as an outing to Scotland with ``Representative No. 1,'' identified by lawyers in the case as Ohio Republican Robert Ney.

``He knows a lot of people,'' said Greg Wallance, an attorney at New York law firm Kaye Scholer LLP and a former prosecutor who also worked on Abscam. ``That's what's got everybody in a tizzy.''

Representative Richard Pombo, a California Republican who received $7,000 in donations from Abramoff after becoming chairman of the House Resources Committee, says lawmakers shouldn't have anything to fear if they received lawful contributions.

``I don't think it's really that big of a problem,'' Pombo said. ``Everybody's going to try to distance themselves.''

Under Wraps

Because the Justice Department has kept its investigation under wraps, little is known about what Abramoff might have to offer on government officials. And prosecutors are probably going to insist on significant jail time for Abramoff, complicating any potential negotiations, Wallance said.

``If he can't provide serious assistance in prosecuting other government officials, then the government is not going to give him as big a discount'' on his sentence, Wallance said. ``He's going to have to come forward with something really good to get a big `home soon' or `never having to leave' discount.''

Wallance and other former prosecutors said it's too soon to say how the Abramoff case might stack up in the annals of public corruption cases. Only if a number of lawmakers are ultimately convicted will it compare with Abscam, they said.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the FBI set up a fake company called ``Abdul Enterprises.'' Agents posing as Middle Eastern businessmen then offered money to officials for political favors. Their videotaped conversations led to the convictions of the six congressmen, a senator and other public officials including the mayor of Camden, New Jersey. Kotelly prosecuted Representative John Jenrette, a South Carolina Democrat.

Overt Offers

The question in the Abramoff case is whether there were any overt offers or demands, said Kotelly, now a partner at Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP in Washington. It's very hard to prosecute lawmakers for alleged quid-pro-quo actions, he said.

``Most of the politicians are smart enough to know that you don't promise to do something in return for money,'' Kotelly said. Then again, he said, ``Abscam proved me wrong.''

Prosecutors and defense attorneys often start out talking in hypothetical terms. For instance, a prosecutor might say he'd be willing to shorten jail time only if the person involved could implicate a high-level government official.

The kinds of talks occurring between Abramoff's lawyers and the U.S. attorney's offices at this point ``could be everything from just total silent stare-down hostility to a pretty active conversation, and maybe an attempt to resolve this even with some kind of plea,'' said John Q. Barrett, a former prosecutor in the Iran-Contra case who teaches law at St. John's University in New York.

`Chemistry'

``It turns on chemistry, or lack thereof, that's developed in the investigation between the prosecutors and lawyers,'' Barrett said.

Abramoff may be unwilling to cooperate. Or prosecutors may find that he has nothing solid enough to offer to make a reduction in jail time worthwhile, lawyers said.

By now, Abramoff may be a big enough catch himself, Wallance said.

``He's a primary target,'' he said. ``The prosecutor makes a name for himself just by convicting Abramoff.''

I don't think Abramoff is going to be unwilling to cooperate or the prosecutor is going to think that Abramoff is a big enough catch.

You can already tell by the way Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove et al. are running from Abramoff that Abramoff's friends have all thrown him to the wind.

I can't imagine Abramoff wants to be the only big "catch" to go down in this mess.

Nope. Abramoff will be making a deal just the way his former business associates, Michael Scanlon and Adam Kidan, have made deals with the prosecution.

Which means a great 2006 if you're a fan of criminal corruption cases.

Which I am.

Wonder what the poll numbers will be like for the governing party after the Abramoff scandal explodes?

The more we learn about the intelligence the Bush administration used in the run up to the Iraq war, the more we should be drafting articles of impeachment against the Preznit and Vice Preznit of "Torture". Here's the story from the NY Times of how the Bush administration based its claims of Al-Qaeda/Saddam ties on statements made by a high-ranking Al Qaeda prisoner who was being tortured in Egypt:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But American officials had not previously acknowledged either that Mr. Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that Mr. Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.

A government official said that some intelligence provided by Mr. Libi about Al Qaeda had been accurate, and that Mr. Libi's claims that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.

...

While he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in American custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions, which were later used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.

Beginning in March 2002, with the capture of a Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, the C.I.A. adopted a practice of maintaining custody itself of the highest-ranking captives, a practice that became the main focus of recent controversy related to detention of suspected terrorists.

The agency currently holds between two and three dozen high-ranking terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world. Reports that the prisons have included locations in Eastern Europe have stirred intense discomfort on the continent and have dogged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit there this week.

Mr. Libi was returned to American custody in February 2003, when he was transferred to the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the current and former government officials. He withdrew his claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda in January 2004, and his current location is not known. A C.I.A. spokesman refused Thursday to comment on Mr. Libi's case. The current and former government officials who agreed to discuss the case were granted anonymity because most details surrounding Mr. Libi's case remain classified.

During his time in Egyptian custody, Mr. Libi was among a group of what American officials have described as about 150 prisoners sent by the United States from one foreign country to another since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks for the purposes of interrogation. American officials including Ms. Rice have defended the practice, saying it draws on language and cultural expertise of American allies, particularly in the Middle East, and provides an important tool for interrogation. They have said that the United States carries out the renditions only after obtaining explicit assurances from the receiving countries that the prisoners will not be tortured.

...

The question of why the administration relied so heavily on the statements by Mr. Libi has long been a subject of contention. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, made public last month unclassified passages from the February 2002 document, which said it was probable that Mr. Libi "was intentionally misleading the debriefers."

The document showed that the Defense Intelligence Agency had identified Mr. Libi as a probable fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda involving illicit weapons.

Mr. Levin has since asked the agency to declassify four other intelligence reports, three of them from February 2002, to see if they also expressed skepticism about Mr. Libi's credibility. On Thursday, a spokesman for Mr. Levin said he could not comment on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Libi's detention because the matter was classified.

And the stupid fuckers in the administration still think it's essential that we use torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" as the Bushies like to call it, when we interrogate terror suspects in order to learn important intelligence that might not otherwise be elicited from prisoners.

Like the "important intelligence" learned from Mr. Al-Libi, that Saddam was helping train Al Qaeda members in WMD use, which turned out to be false and was only made by Mr. Al-Libi in order to get the Egyptian interrogators to stop torturing him?

Good God.

From the very good Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post:

Some American journalists intent on fact-checking President Bush's vision of Iraq are finding it too dangerous to inspect the areas Bush yesterday cited as models of success.

Which sort of tells you the story right there.

While conceding that American efforts to rebuild Iraq have been flawed at times, Bush nevertheless yesterday touted the effectiveness of reconstruction projects in Najaf and Mosul in particular as examples of the "quiet, steady progress" transforming the country.

So how are those projects really doing? Hard to say.

It's too dangerous to allow visitors to inspect them freely, Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington told James Glanz of the New York Times. "I bet if we could get around and see these places that they would not be the story that he's telling," Barton said.

Froomkin goes on to quote an article from Saad Sarhan and Robin Wright in the Washington Post that notes that Moqtada Sadr, militia leader and former enemy of the U.S., is running security in Najaf:

"Some Iraqis challenged Bush's assertions," they write. "In Najaf, Rafid Farhan, 33, said security is now controlled by Moqtada Sadr, a young cleric and militia leader, and not U.S. troops or the Iraqi government. . . .

"[M]ilitia fighters of the two rival religious parties that control the Shiite holy city recently clashed in street battles. A few days ago, former prime minister Ayad Allawi was attacked during a visit by an angry, rock-throwing mob that some Iraqis charge was backed by a militia -- and that Allawi called an assassination attempt."

Shiite militias battling it out in the streets and many cities too dangerous for Western journalists to visit...

...Sure sounds like "quiet, steady progress" to me.

Not a good morning if you're Jack Abramoff.

First Abramoff's former partner, Michael Scanlon, agreed to plead guilty a couple of weeks ago in the Indian Tribes fraud case and cooperate with prosecutors (Abramoff was identified as "Lobbyist A" in the Scanlon indictment.)

Now Adam Kidan, Abramoff's former partner in the Sun Cruz casino boat business, has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges in the Sun Cruz case and cooperate with prosecutors. Part of his cooperation includes testifying against Abramoff in the case. Here's the story (in full) from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (via Josh Marshall at talkingpoints.com):

New York businessman Adam Kidan is expected to plead guilty next week to federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges in connection with the purchase of the SunCruz gambling fleet from entrepreneur Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, according to sources close to the case.

If the deal goes through, Kidan, who was looking at up to 30 years in prison, could now face a maximum of 10 years. That sentence could be reduced depending upon the extent of his cooperation as a witness, not only against his co-defendant -- embattled super lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- but also in the prosecution of three men charged in the Feb. 6, 2001, slaying of Boulis, the sources said.

Lawyers for Kidan and prosecutors are finalizing the deal in which Kidan would plead guilty to one count each of conspiracy and wire fraud, sources said. A "change of plea" hearing has been set for Dec. 15 in Miami before U.S. District Court Judge Paul Huck, according to the judge's clerk.

In August, Kidan and Abramoff were named in a six-count federal indictment charging conspiracy and wire and mail fraud in connection with the purchase of the 11 gambling ships, a corporate jet and other assets from SunCruz and Greek-born owner, business tycoon Boulis.

Boulis, who made his fortune in fast-food restaurants and SunCruz, initially was a willing partner in the scheme, according to the indictment.

But events quickly spun out of control, and less than six months after the plan was thrust into action, Boulis was shot in an ambush-style murder.

Kidan's attorney, Joseph Conway, said Wednesday that he had no comment. Abramoff's attorney, Neal Sonnett, said, "I hadn't heard that" when asked Wednesday about Kidan's intended plea. Sonnett said he wouldn't comment until he received official notification. Abramoff has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Under the plea deal, Kidan would testify against Abramoff, his longtime friend and mentor. Abramoff is also at the center of several Justice Department investigations alleging improper donations and gifts being accepted by members of Congress.

The loan fraud case can be traced to 1999 when the government forced Boulis to sell his controversial SunCruz gambling fleet by using an obscure shipping law prohibiting non-U.S. citizens from owning maritime interests. One of Boulis' lawyers put him in touch with Abramoff to help find potential buyers. Abramoff met Kidan years earlier through a young Republicans club in Washington, D.C., while Kidan was a college undergraduate and Abramoff a law school student. Liking what he saw in the SunCruz deal, he asked Kidan if he wanted to become a partner.

Prosecutors maintain that neither man had the financial wherewithal needed to buy SunCruz, especially Kidan, who was close to being broke, sources said. But authorities said that didn't stop them from diving into negotiations in January 2000. In Boulis, they found a man willing to go along with the agenda, if it meant he could secretly keep part of SunCruz, prosecutors contend.

Six months later, a company Kidan and Abramoff formed struck a deal to buy SunCruz for $147.5 million. The funding they obtained through Foothill Capital Corp. and Citadel Equity Fund required that they pay, and show proof they paid, $23 million of their own money to Boulis at the closing.

The paperwork for the loan also stipulated that Abramoff and Kidan provide accurate personal financial statements, the indictment states. But since neither had enough money to qualify for the financing, they obtained short-term loans. In exchange, those lenders received a cut of SunCruz.

In September 2000, a "Loan and Security Agreement" between Kidan, Abramoff and Boulis was sent to the financial firms, attesting that they paid Boulis the $23 million. But, prosecutors allege, no funds changed hands. Instead, Boulis had a deal with Kidan and Abramoff in which they promised to pay him most of the money and he would still retain a share of SunCruz through a shell company.

Soon after receiving the loan agreement, Foothill and Citadel released $60 million to Kidan and Abramoff's company. But Boulis maintained that he never saw a penny and the relationship with Kidan, who took over the day-to-day operations of SunCruz, quickly soured. Lawsuits and counter-lawsuits were filed and threats were reportedly made.

By November 2000, Kidan had contacted an old friend, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello. Moscatiello had signed a contract with SunCruz to be a "catering consultant" at $25,000 a month, according to court records. Kidan said he thought Boulis was going to kill him, according to statements Moscatiello gave police. Moscatiello, a known associate of the late crime boss John Gotti, promised to smooth things over.

Moscatiello put Kidan in touch with Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, who ran "Moon Over Miami Beach," a company that, among other things, is described in records as a security firm. One of the men who worked for Ferrari was James "Pudgy" Fiorillo. In September, Moscatiello, Ferrari and Fiorillo were indicted in Boulis' murder. Kidan has not been charged in the case.

After being arrested, Moscatiello told detectives that Fiorillo traveled to his Queens home two weeks after the murder and confided that Kidan reportedly told Ferrari to kill Boulis, according to court records. Moscatiello said Fiorillo also indicated that he and Ferrari carried out the hit, the documents show. Moscatiello told detectives, "I told Adam what had happened, what I was told and he told me he never made no phone call and after Tony Ferrari told me it was a lie, I never discussed it anymore with Adam."

Wow. Abramoff's done. Now with Abramoff facing God knows how much jail time in both the Sun Cruz and Indian tribes cases, it's just a matter of time before Abramoff tries to cop a deal in the Indian tribes case and lessen the penalty.

Which means if it's a bad day for Jack Abramoff, it's also a bad day for Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and the rest of Abramoff's cronies.

Hey, we may be getting close to Fitzmas again!!! And Karl Rove may be getting an orange jumpsuit in his stocking!!! From the Associated Press:

(AP) Six weeks after White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted in the CIA leak case, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was back at work Wednesday before another grand jury with top presidential political adviser Karl Rove still under investigation.

Fitzgerald did not comment on the nearly-three-hour grand jury session where the prosecutor was accompanied by three deputies and an FBI agent.

After weeks of avoiding many public appearances with the president, Rove has been noticeably at Bush's side this week.

They traveled together Monday to North Carolina for a speech on the economy.

Rove also rode with Bush in his limousine Wednesday across Washington and listened attentively from the sidelines while the president delivered a speech on Iraq.

In the last grand jury activity in the leak probe, on Oct. 28, Libby, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI. Libby resigned and has pleaded not guilty.

For nearly two years, Fitzgerald has been looking into who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame to the news media.

Plame's identity was disclosed eight days after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat in the run-up to the war.

Rove was not indicted, but Fitzgerald made clear at the time of the Libby indictment that his investigation is not finished.

The prosecutor underscored that point in court papers last month, saying that the probe continues and will involve proceedings before a different grand jury. The first grand jury term expired the day it indicted Libby.

Rove's legal problems stem from the fact that it was not until more than a year into the criminal investigation that he told the prosecutor about disclosing the CIA status of Wilson's wife to Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper on July 11, 2003.

Rove says he had forgotten the Cooper conversation, which occurred days before Plame's identity was revealed by conservative columnist Robert Novak.

The presidential adviser revealed the CIA employment of Wilson's wife to Cooper two days after the presidential aide and Novak discussed Plame's CIA status.

The Justice Department launched the criminal investigation 2 1/2 months later, creating a public uproard and prompting the White House to insist that neither Rove nor Libby had been involved in leaking Plame's identity.

Jeralyn at Talk Left thinks Fitzgerald was presenting Viveca's Novak's deposition to the grand jury after taking it earlier at his office.

Jane at Firedoglake links to a piece from Philipinenews.com that says Karl Rove's deputy, Susan Ralston, has left her job at the White House.

Ralston, you'll remember, used to work for GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff at Preston Gates and Ellis. She later worked with Abramoff at the Greenberg Traurig law firm (which represented George W. Bush during the 2000 Florida recount among other GOP-related causes.)

You may also remember that the Washington Post published an article on September 23, 2005 relating how a Tyco executive who Bush had nominated to be deputy attorney general, Timothy Flanigan, said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Jack Abramoff bragged that he could help keep Tyco from paying a tax liability because he had "good relationships with members of Congress" and "had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue.

You may also remember that Susan Ralston was one apparent link between Mr. Rove and Mr. Abramoff, since Ralston had already left Abramoff's employ to take a job as Karl Rove's deputy as well as a Special Assistant to President Bush. Abramoff was the guy who suggested Ralston for the job at the White House.

You'll also note that Susan Ralston has testified in the CIA leak case about why TIME reporter Matt Cooper's July 11, 2003 phone call was not logged in through the White House switchboard (thus escaping Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald's initial notice in the case and leading some to believe Rove was trying to deliberately mislead the prosecutor about the Cooper conversation.)

Philippinenews.com says Ralston left her job at the White House because of the "pressure". Jane at Firedoglake wonders whether it was the pressure of the CIA leak case or the Abramoff scandal that finally led to Ralston's departure.

Hmmm.

UPDATE: The New York Observer reports that Viveca Novak is going to give her deposition to Patrick Fitzgerald tomorrow. Here's the piece:

Time reporter Viveca Novak is scheduled to give a sworn deposition to special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald tomorrow, a spokesperson for the magazine confirmed.

Novak is expected to discuss under oath her conversations with Robert Luskin, Karl Rove's attorney, in May 2004.

The New York Times reported last week that Novak may have told Luskin that Rove had been Time reporter Matt Cooper's source in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak affair.

Novak will give her deposition to Fitzgerald tomorrow without going before the grand jury. Fitzgerald’s spokesperson Randall Samborn declined to comment. Novak and her attorney, Henry Schuelke, did not return calls seeking comment.

If Fitzgerald wasn't presenting Novak's deposition to the grand jury today, then what was he doing? Was he giving the new grand jury an overview of the case he plans to present to them? Did he interview somebody in the case that we don't know about and was presenting that deposition? Did today have something to do with Bob Woodward?

Double "hmmm."

I guess we'll just have to wait for the inevitable leaks from Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, to VandeHei and Leonning of the Post and Isikoff and Thomas of NEWSWEEK.

Shouldn't be more than a couple of hours.

No surprise here - we're not safer than we were four years ago. From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 - The members of the Sept. 11 commission gave dismal grades to the Bush administration and Congress on Monday in measuring the government's recent efforts to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil, concluding that the government deserved many more F's and D's than A's.

The commissioners awarded the grades in a privately financed "report card" that found that four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation remained alarmingly vulnerable to terrorist strikes, including attacks with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"While the terrorists are learning and adopting, our government is still moving at a crawl," said Thomas H. Kean, the commission's chairman and a former Republican governor of New Jersey. "Many obvious steps that the American people assume have been completed have not been. Our leadership is distracted."

The new report by the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, a private group established by the commission's five Republicans and five Democrats when the panel formally went out of business last year, graded the government's response to the 41 recommendations made in the commission's final report 17 months ago.

There were 17 F's or D's - including an F to Congress for its failure to allocate the domestic antiterrorism budget on the basis of risk and a D for the government's effort to track down and secure nuclear material that could be used by terrorists. There was only one A - and it was an A minus - awarded for the government's efforts to stem the financing of terrorist networks.

...

The White House, which often tangled with the Sept. 11 commission during its official investigation, defended its performance in dealing with terrorist threats, insisting it had acted on most of the panel's recommendations.

"We have taken significant steps to better protect the American people at home," said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. "There is more to do. This is the president's highest responsibility."

To the likely disappointment of the White House, however, the commission's Republicans voiced some of the strongest criticism of the administration and Congress on Monday at a news conference held to release the report.

"The American people ought to demand answers," said James R. Thompson, a Republican commissioner and a former Illinois governor. "Why aren't our tax dollars being spent to protect our lives? What's the rationale? What's the excuse? There is no excuse."

Mr. Thompson joined with other commissioners in offering special criticism of Congress as having failed to ensure that the billions of dollars in domestic security money distributed by the federal government each year are divided up on the basis of risk, instead of pork-barrel politics that often sends money to remote areas where there is little danger of terrorist attack.

The new report noted that Congress and the Bush administration enacted the commission's centerpiece recommendation last year, the creation of the job of director of national intelligence to force the government's spy agencies to work closely together. The post went to John D. Negroponte, the former American ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations.

"The framework for the D.N.I. and his authorities are in place," the report found, giving an overall grade of B to Mr. Negroponte's performance and to the government's effort to support him.

The report gave a failing grade to the administration's development of common policies for treatment of terrorist suspects held abroad; human rights groups and some members of Congress have accused the administration of condoning practices that amount to torture. The administration has opposed legislation to prohibit the use of cruel and degrading treatment against detainees in American custody.

"U.S. treatment of detainees had elicited broad criticism and makes it harder to build the necessary alliances to cooperate effectively with partners in a global war on terror," the report said.

Mr. Kean said at the news conference that as a result of the controversy over the treatment of prisoners, the United States "is not viewed with the same respect we were just a short time ago."

Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic commissioner and a former House member from Indiana, said inhumane treatment of prisoners was counterproductive and might breed a new generation of terrorists. "We should not go down the slippery slope of what other countries might do to terrorize detainees," he said.

The new report was also strongly critical of the government's failures to tighten airline passenger screening, to provide adequate radio spectrums to allow police and fire departments to communicate in a terrorist attack and to push for political reforms in Saudi Arabia.

There was sharp criticism of Congress as having failed to overhaul its methods of oversight on intelligence issues, and of the F.B.I. as moving too slowly to overhaul its antiterrorism operations.

Meanwhile, ABC reports that 10 out of 11 terror suspects held at our secret terrorist prisons in Europe (known as black sites) are subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" - an Orwellian euphemism that means "torture":

The CIA declines to comment, but current and former intelligence officials tell ABC News that 11 top al Qaeda figures were all held at one point on a former Soviet air base in one Eastern European country. Several of them were later moved to a second Eastern European country.

All but one of these 11 high-value al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA's secret arsenal, the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today avoided directly answering the question of secret prisons in remarks made on her departure for Europe, where the issue of secret prisons and secret flights has caused a furor.

Without mentioning any country by name, Rice acknowledged special handling for certain terrorists.

"The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have had to adapt," Rice said.

Oh, yeah. I feel safer with Bushie, Cheney, Rice, and Rummy in charge.

Randy Cunningham - an American hero. From the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — Bombastic and prone to speak first and think about it later, Randy "Duke" Cunningham was never known for understatement or the subtle approach in Congress. But the rampage he went on in the spring of 2000 was something else, even by his standards.

Three years earlier, using his position on a House defense subcommittee, he had bulldozed the Pentagon into buying a $20-million system it didn't want for digitizing paper documents. Predictably, the military dragged its feet on implementing the system, and Cunningham exploded.

During a subcommittee hearing, the California Republican demanded that the Pentagon official he blamed for the delays be fired.

"I want Lou Kratz removed from office," Cunningham thundered. "I think he's incompetent. And I'm calling for his removal. I've had it."

At the time, Cunningham's harsh rhetoric and extreme advocacy for a relatively minor program attracted virtually no attention.

More than five years would pass before it became clear exactly why Cunningham had gone to such extremes: The small information technology company involved with the digitization project was allegedly one of two obscure defense contractors that secretly showered Cunningham with an estimated $2.4 million in cash and expensive gifts — including a Rolls-Royce, money to buy a posh 8,000-square-foot house, and a cornucopia of antique furniture, Oriental rugs and jewelry.

Last Monday, in a move that left many of his friends and colleagues professing shock and bewilderment, Cunningham, 63, pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and announced he was resigning from Congress.

...

Cunningham came to Washington from the San Diego area 15 years ago with the campaign slogan "A Congressman We Can Be Proud Of." He was replacing a Democrat who had been driven from office by charges of sexual harassment. Two years later, in 1992, when Cunningham was redistricted out of his first seat, he took over a seat from a Republican incumbent who had been tainted by the House banking scandal.

A Vietnam War hero who shot down five enemy planes and received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, 15 Air Medals and a Purple Heart as a Navy fighter pilot, Cunningham was one of the most decorated fliers from that war. In Washington, he was an instant celebrity, sought out by the news media and admired by colleagues for his heroism and his special knowledge of the armed forces.

Nor was the political market value of a good-looking, outspokenly patriotic military hero lost on Republican leaders at the time.

"I already consider him a treasure who I could send out anywhere in the country and be confident of his drawing power," former Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.) told The Times in 1991 when he was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

"The older members treat him more like a celebrity than a freshman," Vander Jagt said. "In the short time he's been here, Duke's captured more attention than any other freshman I've ever seen."

...

In the House, he was seen as an amiable colleague, the kind of man who listened appreciatively when someone had a joke and was more comfortable working a room than discussing the fine points of policy.

"I never heard anybody say a bad word about Duke. I think he was an easy guy to like," said Patrick J. Toomey, a former GOP congressman from Pennsylvania. "He always did have a special status — as a war hero."

Cunningham had an emotional streak too, especially if the subject was Americans in uniform. During a 1995 debate, he choked back tears recounting the experience of an American POW in Vietnam who, Cunningham said, had painstakingly sewn a flag onto the inside of his shirt.

In recent years, Cunningham was best known for advocating a constitutional amendment to protect the American flag from "physical desecration."

Sometimes he got into trouble for his blunt remarks. In 1995, criticizing Democrats for supporting defense budget cuts, he called them "the same ones who would put homos in the military." (Later, when a gay rights group held a news conference to condemn him, Cunningham showed up and declared, "If the term 'homos in the military' is offensive, then I apologize and I will not use it again.")

What a sweet guy. Hope he looks good in orange.

From Reuters:

AISORI, Pakistan, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Pakistani tribesmen on Sunday displayed parts of a U.S.-marked missile they said hit a house and killed two boys, evidence at odds with the government which says an explosion there killed a top al Qaeda commander.

Whatever the cause of the blast, the death of Abu Hamza Rabia would be a coup for Pakistan and the United States which describe him as al Qaeda's chief of international operations.

But his body has not been found.

Sat amid the ruins of his mud and concrete-walled home in the restive North Waziristan tribal agency, Haji Mohammad Siddiq told Reuters his 17-year old son and an eight-year-old nephew were killed in a missile attack, but denied there were any militants present.

"I don't know anything about them -- there were no foreigners in my house," Siddiq said. "I have nothing to do with foreigners or al Qaeda.

"We were sleeping when I heard two explosions in my guest room. When I went there I saw my son, Abdul Wasit, and my eight-year-old nephew, Noor Aziz, were dead," said the tall, moustachioed tribesman as he received condolences from a stream of relatives and neighbours.

Pakistan, sensitive to domestic public opinion, has denied U.S. drone aircraft have carried out missile strikes on its soil in the past and Washington has declined to comment.

But tribesmen in Haisori showed U.S.-marked fragments of missiles they said hit the village early on Thursday. One piece of casing clearly bore the words US and MISSILE.

"I heard more explosions and went out to the courtyard, and when I looked up at the sky, I saw a white drone," said Siddiq. "I saw a flash of light come from the drone followed by explosions."

The tribesman, in his 50s, has been asked to appear later this week before a court convened by government-appointed tribal agency officials.

President Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday he was "200 percent" sure Rabia was dead.

But confirmation of Rabia's death is based on intelligence reports and message intercepts, intelligence sources said, and Pakistani security forces have still to find a body.

Officials say Rabia's corpse, along with those of two comrades, was removed by other fighters and buried secretly.

An Arab television channel, al Arabiya, received a telephone call from an unidentified caller denying Rabia was dead.

U.S. counterterrorism officials in Washington confirmed the significance of Rabia's death, but gave no comment on how he might have been killed.

Hard to tell if the CIA actually got their man or hit some innocent civilians.

But given the "honesty" track record of this administration...

Just like the preznit Randy "Duke" Cunningham so vigorously defended the last few years, former Congressman Cunningham, who resigned last week after pleading guilty to bribery, is nothing but a bully. From The Washington Post:

For those who have observed Duke Cunningham's behavior in Washington for 15 years, especially those who have felt his scorn, his remorseful exit from the House last week carried no surprises. Since his early days in Congress, Cunningham's behavior has been predictable: ad hominem attacks followed by tearful apologies.

In one now-famous incident, Cunningham and Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) got in a shoving match over sending troops to Bosnia. Moran confronted Cunningham, triggering a partisan melee among other members -- and Cunningham fled.

Moran found him crying in the cloakroom.

"I thought he had been bullying too many people for too long, and I told him so," Moran recalled. "He said he didn't mean to be so accusatory. . . . After that, he would bring me candy from California."

Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican, can no longer smooth over his bluster and lapses in judgment with a See's Candies party assortment. The eight-term congressman and decorated Navy pilot resigned his seat Monday after tearfully confessing to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors that included $100,000 in cash, a Rolls-Royce and a 42-foot yacht. He pleaded guilty in federal court and awaits sentencing Feb. 27.

The news -- the sheer magnitude of the graft -- was met with incredulity throughout Washington. How could Cunningham, a member of the Appropriations Defense subcommittee, have been so stupid, so craven, so greedy? Even President Bush weighed in, calling the crimes "outrageous."

...

From his arrival in Congress in 1991, Cunningham was branded as volatile and a flamethrower who challenged members to fistfights -- and not someone slated for leadership.

Packard, who sat with Cunningham on the Appropriations Committee, said he had a short fuse. Early on, Packard recalled, Cunningham became angry and emotional at a California delegation meeting when it became clear he did not have the support for a committee assignment he sought. "He was extremely upset and threatened to quit Congress. That was the first indication that he didn't have control of his emotions," Packard said.

Then there were the biting attacks on colleagues -- mainly partisan -- for which he usually apologized.

In 1992, Cunningham suggested that the Democratic House leadership should be "lined up and shot." A few years later, a House debate over water pollution turned ugly when Cunningham said lawmakers backing a particular amendment were the same people who support "homos in the military."

During remarks in his district in 1998 to a gathering of prostate cancer patients, Cunningham commiserated by describing a rectal procedure he had undergone as "just not natural, unless maybe you're Barney Frank."

"He was a blustery fool," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is openly gay. He said Cunningham apologized to him for the remark and noted that he thought Cunningham had "calmed down" in recent years.

On his first trip back to Vietnam, Cunningham sat down with Vietnamese officials for a formal dinner, and his first words of the evening were: "You gooks shot me down."

"It's not exactly the way to start a diplomatic dinner," said Moran, who was on the trip with Cunningham. "I told him quietly that he had bombed them, too."

Yup. Nothing but a bully.

Buh-bye, Duke.

Enjoy prison.

Jeralyn Merritt of Talk Left, who along with Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, has done some pretty solid work cutting through the defense spin in the CIA leak case and figuring out where Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald is going with the investigation has an excellent summary of what she thinks is happening to Rove. I want to quote it in full because it really provides some clarity and perspective in the case for those who are not obsessively following every little detail in the investigation:

Rove, Luskin, Novak and Fitzgerald

The Washington Post Saturday has an article on Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin that reveals Luskin told Novak Rove was not in any trouble in PlameGate over drinks in early 2004. Viveca reportedly replied that wasn't what she had heard and disclosed, almost as water-cooler talk, that she heard Rove had been a source for Cooper.

David Corn thinks he has solved the mystery. He presents Viveca Novak's side of the story. Corn also discloses he regularly used to play basketball with Viveca Novak's lawyer-husband.

The more I read about Viveca Novak and Luskin, the more I think it's a loose end and largely irrelevant. It's a last ditch, but probably irrelevant effort by Luskin and Rove to avoid a perjury charge. The real issues as I see them are:

* Robert Novak told Karl Rove on July 8, 2003, two days after Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times, that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson to Africa to check on whether Iraq might be acquiring uranium from Niger. Rove responded, "I heard that too."

* Fitzgerald wants to know where Rove first heard this. In October, 2003, before there was a grand jury and while Ashcroft still had the case, Rove, like many White House employees was questioned by the FBI. Rove told a false story. He's toast on this. Fitzgerald is going to charge him with making a false statement to investigators. Only if this is all he is charged with, and if Fitzgerald gives him a sentence reduction for cooperation, can Rove avoid jail.

* Rove testified to the grand jury in February, 2004 and reportedly mentioned his call with Novak but not with Cooper. He said he first learned about Valerie Plame Wilson from a reporter, but he couldn't be sure which one. He reportedly also said he might have discussed it with someone in the White House who had heard it from a reporter.

* Fitzgerald is trying to determine whether Karl Rove's February, 2004 grand jury testimony was a lie or the product of a faulty memory. What he cares about is not Cooper, but whether Karl Rove learned about Valerie Plame not from a reporter but from the White House, and specifically, through either the White House Iraq Group or the June 10, 2003 classified memo that found its way onto Air Force One on July 7, 2003. Scooter Libby knew in June, 2003. He discussed Valerie Plame Wilson with Ari Fleischer at lunch on July 7, 2003. Wouldn't he have also discussed it with Rove, when they were both members of the White House Iraq Group which was meeting weekly at that time? It's doubtful it was news to Rove when he wrote the July 11 e-mail to Stephen Hadley?

This is all about whether Fitzgerald will charge Rove not only with making a false statement to investigators in 2003 but perjury before the grand jury in 2004. If he only charges the former, Rove will probably plead guilty with a sentence reduction for cooperation. If he charges both, Rove will have to fight, same as Libby. It would mean real jail time.

Whether Viveca Novak talked out of school to Luskin makes for an interesting discussion on journalist ethics, but is not going to provide the answer as to whether Rove lied during his February, 2004 grand jury appearance. I suspect that Luskin is telling Fitzgerald when he told Rove what Viveca said, Rove said he had no recollection of talking to Cooper, and Luskin took it upon himself to go through his e-mails again, whereupon he found the July 11 Hadley-Rove e-mail and with Rove's permission, turned it over to Fitz with a request that Rove be allowed to correct his testimony to the grand jury. Another (but less likely) possibility is that Luskin will say he didn't pass Viveca's information on to Rove, but took it upon himself to re-examine Rove's e-mails before mentioning it to Rove.

Rove is toast because of his false statement to investigators before there was a grand jury. He has no defense to that charge. He's not getting a complete pass and he knows it. This is all about his attempt to avoid jail. The question is, can he limit Fitzgerald to a false statement charge and avoid a perjury charge?

I'm sticking to my theory posited here :

"Either it will be revealed in coming weeks that he made a plea bargain with Fitzgerald to plead guilty to making a false statement to investigators prior to his grand jury testimony in exchange for no jail time and not being charged with perjury before the grand jury, obstruction of justice or with leaking Valerie Plame Wilson's identity or CIA status -- or he will be indicted and fight because Fitzgerald won't agree to no jail time."

And here:

"I think ultimately Rove will plead guilty to a single false statement charge for lying to investigators rather a perjury count of lying to the grand jury. But he may have more hoops to jump through before Fitzgerald decides the value of his cooperation and how great a reward he should receive. If he can't get Fitzgerald to agree to recommend a downward departure to a probationary range, he probably will fight."

Some background on Rove's different versions:

Raw Story:

"Those close to the case say that Rove was caught up in a game of semantics when he was questioned by FBI investigators, insisting to federal agents that he was not the individual who had leaked Plame-Wilson’s identity to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Novak was the first to make public her name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003 column.

Rove told investigators that he merely passed along information about Plame-Wilson to other journalists and White House officials after it had already appeared in Novak’s column, the attorneys said. He maintained, they added, that it was entirely within his right to do so being that Plame-Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was publicly criticizing the Bush Administration and had claimed in a New York Times op-ed that it had “twisted” prewar intelligence to build public support for a preemptive military strike against Iraq.

According to lawyers, Rove did not tell FBI investigators in 2003 that he had spoken with Novak prior to his column being published and had been one of the two “senior administration officials” cited in Novak’s column as having confirmed Plame’s identity and CIA employment."

Here is a selection of news articles outlining when various reporters spoke to Rove and Libby:

* July 8 - Libby Meets with Miller

* July 8 - Novak talks to Rove.

* July 8 - Novak speaks to unnamed person in the street about Wilson's wife.

* July 9 - Novak Calls Wilson. Or, on July 8, Wilson calls Novak, misses him, they connect on July 10.

* July 11 - Rove talks to Matt Cooper about Wilson's wife.

* July 11 - Rove e-mails Hadley about talking to Matt Cooper.

* July 12 - Pincus source says Wilson's trip was a boondoggle set up by his wife, a CIA analyst

* July 12 - Libby talks to Matt Cooper Posted Sunday :: December 04, 2005| Valerie Plame Leak

Interesting and informative. Also just about the best summary I've seen on Karl's travails in the case.

I agree that the Viveca Novak testimony seems to be nothing more than a side issue to Rove's case.

I also agree that Rove is still trying to talk himself out of the perjury charge for his February 2004 grand jury testimony. I haven't seen any leaked evidence that the exculpatory campaign is going well yet, but you never know. There is an awful lot known only by the special prosecutor in this case, so it's hard to judge by what's in the public record.

I do wonder if Rove does manage to talk himself out of the perjury charge what testimony Karl would have to offer Fitzgerald in order to avoid prison on the false statements charge?

It seems like Fitzgerald has all the evidence he needs to nail Scooter Libby already. So presumably whatever testimony Rove offered to Fitzgerald would have to be about someone other than Libby.

So who would Rove have to sell out? More than likely it would have to be someone like National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley or Vice Preznit Cheney.

My guess is Fitzgerald is trying to turn Rove to get at either Cheney himself, or to get at somebody like Hadley who can get at the vice preznit.

In other words, working his way up the food chain.

Either way, it's a win-win for Rove haters.

If Rove is indicted on false statement and perjury charges, we all get to enjoy the resignation letter, court case and probable jail time.

And if Rove manages to avoid indictment on perjury charges but pleads on the false statement charge and offers testimony against someone else in the administration, we get to see how Rove handles the charge that he went from the guy who created "rat-fuck" opportunities for the administration's enemies to simply a rat.

A king Rove rat.

Wolf Blitzer actually took National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to the woodshed this morning on Late Edition on CNN.

First Wolf asked a question about reports that the United States is imprisoning terror suspects in secret prisons in some countries in Europe. Hadley responded to Wolf's question by talking for about a minute and a half without actually answering the question. So Wolf asked three follow-up questions, actually saying to Hadley "Can I confirm from you that we do have secret terror prisons in Europe?" before Hadley finally went on record by saying, "No, you cannot confirm that. I cannot comment on whether we do or don't have prisons."

Next, Wolf asked about our program of extraordinary rendition in which the CIA kidnaps terror suspects from countries around the world and sends them to places like Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to be tortured. Hadley began by saying it is important for the United States to be able to send terrorists abroad to other countries to be "interrogated" when Wolf broke in to say "You mean terror suspects," pointing out that just because the Bush administration says someone is a terrorist doesn't make it so, especially since many of those rendered are later released.

Finally, Wolf asked Hadley several times how many innocent people we have rendered to other countries as "terrorists" or wrongly imprisoned and later released for lack of evidence (today in the Washington Post Dana Priest relates the story of a German citizen mistakenly held by the U.S. as a terrorist, beaten by interrogators and later released when the CIA realized they were looking for a different man.) Again, Hadley gave some flim-flam response that never really addressed the question, but Wolf noted that press accounts had detailed more than a few terror suspects who had been rendered by the U.S. government to other countries and then were later released.

At the end of the interview, Wolf asked a CIA leak case question, wanting to know about the email Karl Rove had sent to Hadley talking about Rove's July 2003 conversation with Matt Cooper about Valerie Plame, but Hadley said he couldn't comment on the case since the investigation was ongoing.

Fair enough. The damage had already been done in this interview.

The Beard really did his job today, asking tough questions, following up when Hadley was evasive, and fact-checking Hadley when the National Security Adviser offered some bullshit RNC talking point to Blitzer's incisive questions.

Obviously Wolf and his producers at CNN can read the polls. They know most Americans think Bush and most members of his administration are full of shit and Wolf's doing his job as a newsman accordingly, trying to hold these people accountable.

Unfortunately for too long after 9/11, Blitzer and the rest of the Washington press corps abdicated their duties and allowed the Bush administration to say and do anything they wanted without fact-checking them or holding them accountable, which is why the nation is in such bad shape now both domestically and overseas.

But at least Wolf is doing his job now. Many in the media, like Pumpkinhead Russert, continue to give the administration a basic pass by letting them lie and cheat without fact-checking them, and others in the media actually work for the administration unofficially, like Andrea Mitchell, Howard Kurtz, and others, passing along RNC talking points and White House spin with abandon.

So let us praise the Beard for asking tough questions, insisting on forthright answers, and pricking talking points responses with a pin of reality.

Every time the preznit gives us a speech to tell us how everything is really going okay in Iraq despite all evidence to the contrary, the preznit's message is contradicted by reality.

And so it is again. From Reuters:

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) - Insurgents ambushed an Iraqi army patrol north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing 19 soldiers in a well-planned attack, a day after the Pentagon announced 10 U.S. Marines were killed by a bomb west of the capital.

The Iraqi soldiers were traveling in a five-vehicle patrol near Baquba, 60 km (40 miles) from Baghdad, when they were hit by a roadside bomb. Immediately afterwards, gunmen opened fire in what police described as a well-planned assault.

Police sources said 19 soldiers were killed and that they were all from southern Iraq where the population is largely Shi'ite Muslim, potentially adding a sectarian element to the attack.

The deaths come amid a rise in insurgent violence ahead of elections set for December 15, and amid growing tensions between Iraq's Muslim sects. In a move that could aggravate those tensions, the country's top Shi'ite cleric has urged Shi'ites to turn out and vote for religious candidates on election day.

The attack in Baquba, where there has been a surge in guerrilla activity over the past three weeks, followed the assault on the Marines near the former rebel city of Falluja on Thursday, the deadliest attack on U.S. troops for four months.

The Marines were on a foot patrol near a factory when they were struck by a bomb made out of several artillery shells strung together, the Marine Corps said. The deaths raise to more than 2,120 the number of U.S. troops to have died in the war.

...

U.S. commanders have said they expect an increase in violence in the build up to the election. Over the past three weeks there has a been a series of car bombings and suicide attacks that have killed more than 230 Iraqis, mostly civilians.

Many of the strikes have been sectarian in nature, with Sunni Arab insurgents targeting the Shi'ite majority in an attempt to sow discord and push the country closer to civil war.

...

Separately, four Western aid workers kidnapped a week ago appeared in a second militant video aired by Al Jazeera TV. The four -- two Canadians, a Briton and an American -- face death unless all 12,000 prisoners in Iraq are released by December 8.

So far this month, 14 American soldiers have died in Iraq. It is only December 3rd.

No matter what the preznit says about how great the political process is going in Iraq, the country is on the brink of civil war. The sectarian violence and revenge killings between Sunni and Shi'a prove that fact.

No matter how much progress the preznit claims has been made in the training of Iraqi forces, every fact-checking done by reputable news media have noted the preznit is being optimistic at best and decpetive at worst in his characterization of Iraqis nearly ready to take over their own defense. For instance, the preznit claimed Iraqi forces "primarily led" the assault on Tal Afar. Michael Ware, a TIME reporter, told Anderson Cooper (video on Crooks and Liars) that simply was untrue.

So the bad news from Iraq continues, as it has for months and months now. The spin from the administration also continues, as does the propaganda both in our media and the press over in Iraq (paid for by your hard earned US tax dollars, of course.)

Unfortunately for the preznit and fortunately for the nation, few outside of the extreme wingnuttery are believing the preznit's word over the facts on the ground and the pictures on the television anymore.

According to VandeHei and Leonnig of the Washington Post, it happened "over drinks":

A reporter for Time magazine told Karl Rove's attorney in early 2004 that the White House deputy chief of staff might be in more legal trouble than he originally thought, according to sources familiar with the conversation. Now, Rove is relying on that casual exchange as part of a broad effort to convince a prosecutor he did not lie about his role in the CIA leak case, the sources said.

A conversation between longtime friends -- Viveca Novak, who has helped cover the case for Time, and Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney -- is at the heart of the latest legal maneuvering in the two-year-old case.

Over drinks, Novak told Luskin that Time employees were buzzing that Rove had talked to her colleague Matthew Cooper about CIA operative Valerie Plame in July 2003, sources familiar with the conversation said.

Rove, the president's top political aide, remains under investigation into whether he made false statements for initially failing to tell the FBI and the grand jury that he had spoken to Cooper for a story Cooper wrote on the case.

It is not clear why, or if, the information from Novak could help clear Rove, but Luskin used it and other information to persuade Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to rethink indicting Rove in late October, according to a source briefed on the matter. Now, Fitzgerald is preparing to question Novak about the conversation as early as next week.

One person familiar with the case said the Novak-Luskin conversation is not what prompted Rove to change his testimony in the case. In fact, this person said, Novak told Luskin about the Rove-Cooper connection before Rove's first appearance before the grand jury in February 2004. In that appearance, Rove testified that he did not recall talking to Cooper about Plame. It was not until October 2004 that Rove told the grand jury he recalled the Cooper chat.

New details emerged yesterday of Rove's version of how and when he came to remember the Cooper conversation. Shortly before his client's second appearance before the grand jury in October, Luskin personally conducted a review of thousands of e-mails Rove had sent during the crucial weeks in 2003, including those from accounts reserved for personal and political correspondence, a source familiar with the situation said.

Amid the e-mails, Luskin found one sent from Rove to Stephen J. Hadley, then deputy national security adviser, in which Rove mentioned his conversation with Cooper. The e-mail was written from Rove's government account, which investigators searched early in the inquiry. It is unclear why the e-mail was not discovered at that time.

Once found by Luskin, the e-mail was shared with Rove and then quickly turned over to Fitzgerald, the source said. Rove then testified that the e-mail "established that he had in fact had a conversation with Cooper," the source said.

Legal sources involved in the probe said Rove's timing in ultimately recalling -- or finally revealing -- his conversation with Cooper is certainly significant to Fitzgerald as he considers whether to charge the White House adviser. Rove provided the information on Oct. 15, 2004, to the grand jury. That new testimony came exactly one month after Fitzgerald issued a new subpoena to Cooper calling upon him to testify before the grand jury about Rove.

It also came two days after Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan issued a contempt citation that ordered Cooper to testify.

...

According to a source familiar with Novak's conversation with Luskin, the two were having a casual conversation over drinks sometime in early 2004 when Luskin insisted that his client, Rove, faced no danger in the leak investigation. Novak, described as fishing for information or trying to test Luskin's statement, begged to differ. She said she had heard at the magazine that Rove had been a key source for Cooper on information he published about Plame.

Jim Kelly, Time's managing editor, said Novak's conversation with Luskin took place as part of her normal reporting assignment to keep tabs on the Fitzgerald investigation. He said it is inaccurate to suggest that Novak revealed Cooper's source.

"There's no way that Viveca Novak knowingly, wittingly gave up a confidential source to Robert Luskin," Kelly said.

A source familiar with the exchange said the fact that Rove was Cooper's source was known by only a few at the magazine, including Cooper, his Washington bureau editor and Kelly, but it was not as closely guarded a secret as Time editors now believe it should have been.

Novak did not definitively know that Rove had spoken to Cooper about Plame, the source said, but may have heard gossip from colleagues who had reason to know. Kelly said it is unfair and premature to judge Novak's decision to discuss a colleague's possible confidential source with someone outside the news organization.

"I think to be fair to everyone involved here, we're going to wait until after Viveca testifies under oath to address all the issues presented by this new development," he said. "After that happens, we're going to fully review exactly what transpired here. We want to know exactly how this came to be."

Kelly declined to comment on when Novak notified the magazine that Luskin planned to seek her testimony before Fitzgerald.

Media ethics experts said Novak's decision to discuss Cooper's source with someone outside her news organization raises new questions about reporters' willingness to casually trade information with sources. Cooper had promised anonymity to Rove in their telephone call, and Time fought a year-long legal battle to keep him from being forced to break that promise, before ultimately giving in.

Randall Eliason, the former chief of public integrity prosecution at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, and another former prosecutor, David Schertler, speculated that Fitzgerald would not have considered charging Rove unless he had significant evidence from other witnesses that Rove mentioned the Cooper conversation to them. Now the prosecutor must check out the Novak conversation and weigh it against his other evidence.

"If you're going to bring charges against the White House deputy chief of staff, you want to be absolutely convinced it was an intentional lie," Schertler said. "I think Fitzgerald is looking at this so at the end of the day he can say, 'I explored everything.' "

Couple of things here.

First, if Rove and Luskin really think Viveca Novak's testimony to Fitzgerald somehow helps Rove, they're crazy.

Second, I don't think either Rove or Luskin really do believe Viveca Novak's testimony helps them. I think Luskin is desperately trying to spin a plausible reason for why Rove didn't tell Fitzgerald about his June 2003 conversation with Matt Cooper until October 15, 2004, two days after Judge Hogan cited Cooper on a civil contempt charge and more than eight months after Rove testified to the grand jury in February 2004 without mentioning the Cooper conversation.

Third, if this is the best Luskin and Rove have got to use, Rove's as good as done now.

As Randall Eliason notes in the Post article, Fitzgerald wouldn't have considered charging Rove with perjury and/or false statements offenses without "significant evidence from other witnesses that Rove mentioned the Cooper conversation to them."

This Novak testimony certainly doesn't look to help Rove on the perjury/false statements front, even if Luskin and Rove's defense team is spinning it as exculpatory.

Remember, Luskin also claimed (as was dutifully reported by Michael Isikoff in NEWSWEEK) that a July 11, 2003 email Rove sent to his deputy Adam Levine in which Rove didn't mention his Cooper conversation was also exculpatory (showing Rove didn't think the Cooper conversation was significant or memorable), even though Rove had sent another email to deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley on the same day telling Hadley he had waved Cooper off the Joe Wilson story.

Strangely enough, the Levine alibi must not have impressed Fitzgerald too much, because we haven't heard anything since about it.

I have a feeling the story we heard last week from "sources close to the investigation who asked not to be identified because of the nature of the investigation" that the Novak testimony was going to help Rove is going to disappear just like the Levine story and the Betamax.

And I hope Rove enjoys his Christmas this year, because I think he's going to be doing time for next Christmas.

When will the morons in the White House realize the more times they say they killed th# 3 man in Al Qaeda, the more credibility they lose. They've gone to this well too many times, they've said they've killed top level Al Qaeda operatives too often while terrorism around the world continues to spread for anybody to take what they say at face value.

I mean, haven't they ever read "The Boy Who cried Wolf"?

Anyway, here's the story, such as it is, from MSNBC:

SLAMABAD, Pakistan - The operational commander of al-Qaida and possibly the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, Hamza Rabia, was killed early Thursday morning by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials told NBC News.

Pakistan's president later confirmed the militant leader's death.

“Yes indeed, 200 percent. I think he was killed the day before yesterday if I’m not wrong,” President Pervez Musharraf told reporters as he arrived in Kuwait on an official visit on Saturday.

While Pakistani officials publicly said Rabia died in a blast caused by explosives stored in a house for bomb-making, officials speaking on condition of anonymity told NBC News he was killed by a CIA missile strike carried out by an unmanned Predator airplane.

Rabia has been sought by both U.S. and Pakistani officials for more than two years. Pakistan has offered a $1 million reward for his capture. He is believed to have participated in the planning for two assassination attempts against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Dec. 14 and Dec. 25, 2003. At that time, Rabia was believed to be the chief deputy to Abu Faraj al-Libbi, al-Qaida's operational chief and the No. 3 man in the organization. In May, Pakistani security forces captured Abu Faraj and turned him over to the United States.

U.S. officials have said that Rabia succeeded Abu Faraj as operations chief. Rabia was brought into al-Qaida by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No. 2. Like al-Zawahiri, Rabia is an Egyptian. U.S. officials have described him recently as "top-five al-Qaida" and, as one US official said on Friday, "killing him would be indeed a very big deal."

Rabia was the target of another Predator attack on Nov. 5, according to local Pakistani officials. During that strike, in the village of Mosaki, eight people were killed in what is now described as an unsuccessful attempt to kill Rabia. Local officials have told NBC News that the dead included the wife and children of the al-Qaida leader.

Whoo-hoo. I guess we're winning the war on terror.

To be frank, I'm so blase about this stuff now that I can't even garner up any enthusiasm to be snarky about the Bushies.

Jeralyn Merrit at Talk Left and Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake had this story about TIME reporter Viveca Novak tipping off Karl Rove's lawyer in the CIA leak case before the NY Times ran it today. Still, it's nice to see that not every reporter simply takes dictation from Karl Rove's defense team when writing up CIA leak stories (though most seem to):

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - A conversation between Karl Rove's lawyer and a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case, people knowledgeable about the sequence of events said Thursday.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, spoke in the summer or early fall of 2004 with Viveca Novak, a reporter for Time. In that conversation, Mr. Luskin heard from Ms. Novak that a colleague at the magazine, Matthew Cooper, might have interviewed Mr. Rove about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the case, the people said.

Time reported this week that the prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has summoned Ms. Novak to testify about a conversation she had with Mr. Luskin, but provided no explanation of what Mr. Fitzgerald might be looking for. The account provided Thursday by people with knowledge of the discussions between Ms. Novak and Mr. Luskin suggests that Mr. Fitzgerald is still trying to determine whether Mr. Rove was fully forthcoming with investigators and whether he altered his grand jury testimony about his dealings with reporters only after learning that one, Mr. Cooper, might identify him as a source.

...

Lawyers in the case have said that Mr. Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, remains in legal jeopardy because his initial statements to investigators and to the grand jury were not accurate.

Months before the conversation between Ms. Novak and Mr. Luskin, Mr. Rove testified to the grand jury that he had held a conversation about the C.I.A. officer with only one journalist, Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist. Mr. Rove did not disclose that he had also spoken to Mr. Cooper either in his first grand jury testimony, in February 2004, or in an earlier interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But after his conversation with Ms. Novak, who is not related to the columnist, Mr. Luskin asked Mr. Rove to have the White House search for any record of a discussion between Mr. Rove and Mr. Cooper around the time that Ms. Wilson's identity became public in July 2003.

The search turned up an e-mail message from Mr. Rove to another senior White House official, Stephen J. Hadley, who was the deputy national security adviser, that recounted a conversation between Mr. Rove and Mr. Cooper. On Oct. 14, 2004, Mr. Rove went before the grand jury again to alter his earlier account, by saying he had also discussed the C.I.A. officer with Mr. Cooper.

Associates of Mr. Rove said that he did not initially recall the conversation with Mr. Cooper amid the hundreds of calls and e-mail messages he deals with each day, and that once the message to Mr. Hadley was uncovered he took it to prosecutors and testified fully.

They have said that Mr. Rove had signed a waiver to allow reporters to testify about their confidential discussions with him and that he testified about his conversation with Mr. Cooper long before Mr. Cooper did.

But Mr. Fitzgerald appears to be evaluating whether Mr. Rove came forward with the e-mail and his new testimony only after it became apparent that Mr. Cooper might be compelled to testify about it. It is not clear precisely what Ms. Novak told Mr. Luskin, or what the context for their conversation had been.

People involved in the case said that at a minimum Ms. Novak communicated to Mr. Luskin that Mr. Rove might face legal problems because of potential testimony from Mr. Cooper, her colleague. They said Ms. Novak had told Mr. Luskin that Mr. Cooper might have been in contact with Mr. Rove about Ms. Wilson in the days before her identity became public. Mr. Cooper helped write an article on Time's Web site in July 2003 that was among the first, after Mr. Novak's column, to divulge Ms. Wilson's identity, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame.

At a minimum, Viveca Novak should be fired from her job at TIME for her horseshit behavior in all of this. Tipping off Rove's lawyer and covering the story for TIME?

Isn't that a conflict of interest?

Uh, huh - it sure is. But what's new in Washington these days? Can we count the reporters who have either behaved unethically, illegally, or badly in this case.

First, there's Judy Miller and her career as a stenographer to the stars.

Then there's Pumpkinhead Russert, who often discusses the CIA leak case on his snoozefest Meet The Press without disclosing his role in the Scooter Libby indictment.

We also know that Washington Post "reporter" Bob Woodward went all over the cable news shows and network morning shows to denounce Patrick Fitzgerald as a "junk yard dog" prosecutor and the CIA leak case as a nothing case without disclosing his role in the case, namely that he appears to have been the first member of the press "known" to have learned Valerie Plame's identity from a member of the Bush administration.

And there's Andrea Mitchell of NBC news. She's married to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and wines and dines with members of the administration on a nightly basis. But that's no matter. So do lots of other "objective journalists."

No, Mitchell's problem is that she also is up to her eyeballs in the leak case and has engaged in unethical behavior at the very least, having been identified as one of the six reporters who received the leaked name/identity of Ms. Plame (although she claims she wasn't leaked the name until AFTER Robert Novak's newspaper column outed Ms. Plame.)

She also told Alan Murray on CNBC on October 3rd, 2003 that Ms. Plame was widely known as a CIA operative within the Washington press corps that was covering intelligence issues. Her claim seemed to bolster the administration's defense that Ms. Plame wasn't covert because many people in Washington knew she worked at the CIA. Mitchell later retracted that statement on Imus in the Morning, however, when Don Imus pressed her about it, claiming she had "mispoken". Here's the relevant portion via David Fiderer at Huffingtonpost). First, the Murray part:

Alan Murray: Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?

Mitchell: It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it. "Analysis: Possible criminal outing of CIA agent" CNBC: Capital Report October 3, 2003

Now, Andrea Mitchell backpedaling on Imus:

Mitchell: I said that it was widely known that - here's the exact quote - I said that it was widely known that Wilson was an envoy and that his wife worked at the CIA. But I was talking about . . .

Imus: OK, so you did say that. It took me a minute to get that out of you.

Mitchell: No, I was talking about after the Novak column. And that was not clear. I may have misspoken in October 2003 in that interview.

Imus: When was the Novak column?

Mitchell: The Novak column was on the 14th, July 12th or 14th of '03.

Imus: So this was well after that?

Mitchell: Well after that. That's why the confusion. I was trying to express what I knew before the Novak column and there was some confusion in that one interview. (Just One Minute)

It is not the first time Andrea Mitchell has mispoken when she has covered this case. Interestingly enough, whenever she "mispeaks," she tends to mispeak in the favor of the Bush administration by passing along information that bolsters their talking points or short circuits criticism of the administration. Regardless, whenever Andrea Mitchell opens her mouth, some RNC spin is coming out and she never acknowledges that fact.

The Washington press corps, with a few exceptions, has been abominable in their coverage of this case. We happen to know just how abominably they have behaved because of the transparency generated by the special prosecutor. One wonders just how abominably the Washington press corps has behaved in its coverage, say, of the lead-up to the Iraq war or in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks when Bush was running away from danger. Were they "objective journalists" covering stories honestly or were they advocates for themselves (like Woodward and Russert) or advocates for their husband's administration (like Mitchell) or advocates for their own political agendas (like Miller.)

No wonder the country's so fucked up.

I bet we could improve Washington a bit by sending Bob Woodward and Viveca Novak into press exile along with Judy Miller.

Isikoff and Hosenball over at NEWSWEEK say the "Bush wanted to bomb" Al-Jazeera story would have gone away pretty quickly if the British gov't hadn't threatened to use the Official Secrets Act on anybody else who revealed details from the Downing Street memo that allegedly transcribed Tony Blair's talking George Bush out of bombing the Arab TV network:

Nov. 30, 2005 - A British government crackdown on government leaks may have backfired by calling world attention to an ultrasensitive secret memo whose alleged contents have embarrassed President George W. Bush and strained relations between London and Washington. The document allegedly recounts a threat last year by Bush to bomb the head office of the Arabic TV news channel Al-Jazeera.

U.K. authorities consider the memo, described as minutes or a transcript of an April 16, 2004, White House meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, so diplomatically sensitive that Blair’s attorney general last week warned U.K. media by e-mail that they could face prosecution under the country's draconian Official Secrets Act if they reported on its contents. But all the legal threat appeared to do was call more attention to the still-mysterious document and, at a minimum, appear to confirm its existence.

Bush administration officials initially dismissed the memo’s allegations about Bush’s threat against Al-Jazeera as “outlandish.” U.S. officials later suggested that if Bush did talk with Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera, the president was only joking. Asked directly today about Bush's purported threat to bomb Al-Jazeera, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "Any such notion that we would engage in that kind of activity is just absurd." McLellan did not respond to follow-up questions as to whether Bush actually said what the memo says he did.
But a senior official at 10 Downing Street, Blair’s official residence, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, recently seemed to give credence to the Al-Jazeera threat. The official told NEWSWEEK London Bureau chief Stryker McGuire: "I don't think Tony Blair thought it was a joke."

One of the few journalists to claim to have had a detailed briefing on the memo’s contents—the Daily Mirror’s Kevin Maguire—also says the document indicates that Blair took Bush’s threat so seriously he spent part of the meeting trying to dissuade Bush from attacking Al-Jazeera. The only significant leak so far of the document’s alleged content surfaced in the Daily Mirror, a tabloid known for its frequent criticism of the U.S. president. Last week, the Mirror reported that the memo detailed a discussion in which Bush told Blair he planned to bomb Al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar. The satellite channel is celebrated in the Arab world for its popularity and influence but often reviled in Washington for its broadcasts of video messages by Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.

The Bush-Blair meeting occurred as U.S. military forces were engaged in bitter fighting with Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah. According to the Mirror, Al-Jazeera had infuriated policymakers in both Washington and London by broadcasting what they saw as inflammatory pictures of the fighting from behind enemy lines, including images of dead U.S. soldiers.

But given that what the Daily Mirror knows and doesn't know about the document—its reporters have never actually seen a copy—it is likely the purported Al-Jazeera comment never would have gotten the attention it has had it not been for the British government's decision to invoke the Official Secrets Act.

...

Because of the Daily Mirror’s reputation for Bush-bashing and sometimes erratic fact-checking (the paper’s editor was fired after he approved publication of what turned out to be faked pictures showing British troops abusing detainees in Iraq), the paper’s initial report about the memo and Bush’s alleged threat against Al-Jazeera was largely dismissed or ignored—especially by U.S. media. But the Mirror’s allegations sparked an international uproar after U.K. Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith sent his e-mail to British editors last week warning them of possible prosecution if they published any more of the sensitive document’s contents. “If the attorney general hadn’t issued his warning, the story probably would have died,” one British media executive following the controversy said.

Now the suppressed document has become a cause célèbre: Maguire told the Frontline Club that bloggers and other publications from around the world have indicated a willingness to defy the U.K. government and publish the document in full—if they can only get their hands on it. A delegation of senior Al-Jazeera officials this week also visited London to investigate the seriousness of the threat against their network. Said Al-Jazeera’s director-general, Wada Khanfar: “We are taking [this allegation] very seriously because it concerns our very life and our organization. It concerns journalism as a whole and our audience all over the world so we are indeed very concerned about it … We came to London with many questions and were [looking] to find answers, but because of the attorney general’s warning against publishing the memorandum and the vague general statements that came from 10 Downing Street and the White House, we still do not know exactly what the context was nor do we do know many details aside from what has been published. So [far] we have not had any official communication from Downing Street nor the U.S. We have only heard general statements that did not really say much.”

The U.S. and the Brits are going to keep trying to cover the story up, but you eventually the whole story will leak out.

And of course if they had just come clean originally and told a plausible story about the memo (e.g., Bush was only kidding when he said he wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera - and besides, you should hear what he says about CBS!!!), I'm sure the whole thing would have pretty much blown over.

But instead they stonewalled and covered up and threatened people with the draconian Official Secrets Act and now they've managed to intrigue thousands of journalists and bloggers the world over about the story.

Stupid, really. But this is what happens when you're dealing with dishonest, nasty people whose first impulses are always to lie and/or attack opponents (or perceived opponents.)