Culver: Reform elections to cut costs, gain voters
The Daily Nonpareil, Council Bluffs
When
Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver went to the polls for Tuesday's
primary election, he was the ninth person in his large West Des Moines
precinct to vote.
It was 6 p.m.
Overall,
the state's turnout for the election was "disappointing," Culver said.
This included a weak 6.25 percent turnout in Pottawattamie County when
10 percent was the predicted number. Another county had just a 2.3
percent turnout.
That's why it might be time for a change, Culver said Thursday.
"We need
to look for savings, we need to look for better voter turnout," he
said. "I think the time is right to take a good hard look."
One
idea, Culver suggests, is to allow people to vote by mail for primary
elections, instead of opening up all of Iowa's 1,980 precincts, which
costs a total of $1.5 million.
(more)
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Sunday, June 13
Culver: Reform elections to cut costs, gain voters
by
Linda Thieman
on Sun 13 Jun 2004 04:27 PM CDT
The CIA Is Our Friend, or The Enemy of Mine Enemy Is My Friend
by
Linda Thieman
on Sun 13 Jun 2004 12:50 PM CDT
The CIA Is Our Friend, or The Enemy of Mine Enemy Is My Friend
It's a little bit unusual, but there is an old article making the rounds amongst the online Dean community these days. It's being sent out on Dean list after Dean list, so I was finally tempted to read it. This article from CityPages.com up in the Twin Cities is dated July 30, 2003, and brings up some points that complement that other, more recent and equally-widely circulated article, the one about the CIA and their retaliation against the Bush junta. It's very long, but very well done. Take a look. ALL THE pRESIDENT'S LIES by Steve Perry July 30, 2003 In recent weeks, the press and some Democrats have finally taken up a critical White House deception about Iraq and uranium. What took them so long? And what about all the other lies? It seems a long time ago now, but May 1 [2003] was a big day for the pResident--Victory in Iraq Day, even though he could not say so officially without putting U.S. occupation forces on the wrong side of still more international laws. But the occasion was designed with all the martial preening of a victory celebration and then some. The White House announced that Bush would close the day by delivering an address to the world from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln just off the coast of San Diego. And he would arrive on board in a Navy Viking jet. This bit of gaudy theatrics was attributed to the pResident's desire to avoid a post-docking ceremony that would delay the sailors' homecoming. Afterward, when someone pointed out to Ari Fleischer that the carrier was within helicopter range of shore when W made his fighter-jet entrance, Fleischer essentially shrugged and said, The pResident really wanted to ride in that plane. According to the Washington Post, Bush also took a course of "underwater survival training" in the White House swimming pool to prepare for his odyssey. [Playing G.I. Joe, I imagine.] That afternoon the pResident's plane broke through the clouds and glided to a tailhook landing with the whole country watching on television. Bush, grinning like a kid who got a real F-18 for Christmas, emerged in a camouflage flight suit and gave a thumbs-up to the cameras. But if it looked at first like the sequel to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, there was also more than a whiff of Triumph of the Will in that Flight of the Valkyries entrance, especially with Karl Rove's own film crew on hand to shoot the opening scenes of the Campaign 2004 biopic. Then Bush swapped the jumpsuit for a business suit and ran an exultant rhetorical victory lap, during the course of which he proffered boast after boast that happened to be untrue. The shooting war is over and we won... We've defeated an ally of al Qaeda... The Iraqi people are liberated... We are rebuilding Iraq... We are in control of events in Iraq... Iraqis are celebrating the U.S. presence... We don't do business with countries that harbor terrorists... Not only were these contentions false; they were already known to be so by anyone who had made a point of keeping up with the international English-language press, including a growing though still small number of internet-prowling Americans. The administration's May Day pageant was strictly for the undifferentiated mass of folks at home, that majority of Americans who had gotten their news from TV and later told pollsters that Saddam was behind 9/11 (70 percent), or we'd already found WMDs in Iraq (33 percent). Needless to say, misapprehensions like these were not failures of the Bush information plan, but successes. But now the extent and gravity of the White House's lies are beginning to look manifest even on television. (much, much more)
Iowa & The Environment: Sludge Funds
by
Linda Thieman
on Sun 13 Jun 2004 08:36 AM CDT
Iowa & The Environment:
Sludge Funds AlterNet.org In mid-May, the propaganda machine at the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency was like a diesel engine in overdrive, breaking with its nonpartisan past to help [re-select] the [pseudo-]president. After cutting deals with oil and diesel engine companies on new standards for diesel heavy equipment, the EPA was proclaiming, hyperbolically, that [Pseudo-]president Bush was taking bold steps that would usher in a veritable Age of Aquarius for clean air. While spin-doctors were plying their craft, White House political surgeons were quietly carving up an EPA plan to clean up lethal emissions of electric power plants. By the time they were through, the plan resembled the hapless Trojans slashed apart by Brad Pitt's Achilles. Progressive staffers at the EPA had been promoting a plan to create incentives for power companies to use energy more efficiently – an idea that could reduce not only greenhouse gas emissions, but harmful pollutants as well. Behind closed doors, however, the White House axed the idea. What emerged was a plan that favored the oldest and dirtiest coal-fired electric plants. Though the matter dealt with a seemingly esoteric and technical issue, the stakes were enormous. The White House gambit not only constituted a huge financial windfall for some of the biggest Bush campaign contributors, it also rewarded companies in a number of battleground states important in the November election, including Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Iowa. (more) |
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