Okay, I've had enough

Let it be known, from this time foreward, that Obi wan liberali has declared his candidacy for President of the United States. Ok, let's be real, that this is no more than a cyber-presidency. But looking at the candidates on either side of this contest has made believe that I am as well qualified to be President as any of the current candidates. This is not based upon any hubris that I have served in office and have been blessed with the support of powerful lobbyists representing great U.S. manufactueres or retilers. I base this upon a great concern that our Republic is in danger. That we as a nation have thrown off the ideals of the Geneva Conventions, that we have justified spying on our own people (for their own good) and have thrown away the freedoms that Thomas Jefferson fought for us.

When we surrender the freedoms that our founders guaranteed us over fear of terrorism, the terrorists have won. I for one despise the idea that the terrorists will determine our level of freedom. I for one challenge this worthless Bush Adminstration for surrendering our moral authority in the world because of his fear of being outdone by people who believe in a religion a majority of Americans despise.

Listen, I announce my candidacy because I am bewildered by my Democratic leaders and Presidential candidates for their failure to speak against tyranny when that tyranny is so obvious to so many Americans. This is the time for those who truly believe in our Republic to stand against the tyranny that is the Bush Administration. I offer myself as a viable option. I have more relevant business experience than Hillary Clinton and have been involved in Democratic politics since 1970 when I campaigned for Frank Moss (the man that should have defeated the moron we know as Orrin Hatch).

I can say with every fiber in my being, that I have managed more people than Hillary Clinton, that I've read 20 times the books of George W. Bush (admittedly no great feat) and that I may look a little haggard, I can provide more experience and wisdom than Barak Obama.

All I can say, is "Vote Obi".

Blackwater- The Neo-con Private Army

Welcome to Blackwater. Here is a security contractor under contract with the State Department to provide security. Since the early stages of this conflict, contractors have had a more significant role in the military situation in Iraq than the total “coalition of the willing” minus Great Britain. No one knows for sure how many private contractors are in Iraq, but one thing is for sure, they are making an impact. The first battle of Falluja was fought due to some contractors making a wrong turn and ending up in hostile territory, ultimately getting killed and hung from a bridge. Estimates of the numbers of these contract employees is hard to gauge, but most estimates conclude that there are at least 100,000 of them. Blackwater just happens to be the biggest.

And who is Blackwater? Salon.com had a story on providing some good background on the company, it’s founder and it’s contacts. From the Salon article:

"Erik Prince, founder and CEO: How did Blackwater go from a small corporation training local SWAT teams to a seemingly inseparable part of U.S. operations in Iraq? Good timing, and the connections of its CEO, may be the answer Prince, who founded Blackwater in 1996 but reportedly took a behind-the-scenes role in the company until after 9/11, has connections to the Republican Party in his blood. His late father, auto-parts magnate Edgar Prince, was instrumental in the creation of the Family Research Council, one of the right-wing Christian groups most influential with the George W. Bush administration. At his funeral in 1995, he was eulogized by two stalwarts of the Christian conservative movement, James Dobson and Gary Bauer. Edgar Prince's widow, Elsa, who remarried after her husband's death, has served on the boards of the FRC and another influential Christian-right organization, Dobson's Focus on the Family. She currently runs the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, where, according to IRS filings, her son Erik is a vice president. The foundation has given lavishly to some of the marquee names of the Christian right. Between July 2003 and July 2006, the foundation gave at least $670,000 to the FRC and $531,000 to Focus on the Family."

"Both Edgar and Elsa have been affiliated with the Council for National Policy, the ecretive Christian conservative organization whose meeting have been attended by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer, and whose membership is rumored to include Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Dobson. The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation gave the CNP $80,000 between July 2003 and July 2006."

"The former Betsy Prince -- Edgar and Elsa's daughter, Erik's sister -- married into the DeVos family, one of the country's biggest donors to Republican and conservative causes. ("I know a little something about soft money, as my family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party," Betsy DeVos wrote in a 1997 Op-Ed in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.) She chaired the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000 and again from 2003 to 2005, and her husband, Dick, ran as the Republican candidate for Michigan governor in 2006."

"Erik Prince himself is no slouch when it comes to giving to Republicans and cultivating relationships with important conservatives. He and his first and second wives have donated roughly $300,000 to Republican candidates and political action committees. Through his Freiheit Foundation, he also gave $500,000 to Prison Fellowship Ministries, run by former Nixon official Charles Colson, in 2000. In the same year, he contributed $30,000 to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. During college, he interned in George H.W. Bush's White House, and also interned for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. Rohrabacher and fellow California Republican Rep. John Doolittle have visited Blackwater's Moyock, N.C., compound, on a trip arranged by the Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm founded by former aides of then House Majority Leader Tom Delay. ASG partner Paul Behrends is a longtime associate of Prince's."

So they are well-connected and making a lot of money in Iraq, something that seems to happen to a lot of well-connected Republicans. And isn’t it reassuring to know that Republicans have their own private army to call upon.

Blackwater got some bad press recently when they allegedly killed 11 unarmed Iraqis on September 16. They also had a situation where one of their employees, while drunk, shot one of the bodyguards of the Iraqi Vice President. As it turns out, contractors have been a great cause of concern for our military in Iraq. These amateur soldiers, not sworn in like the regular military, have more or less operated under their own guidelines, and have often taken a shoot first policy and have been notorious for driving civilians off of Iraqi roads. Just as General Petraeus has tried to reconfigure our strategy in Iraq to a counter-insurgency, working on winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis, time and again, contractors have undermined their efforts.

One of the most significant aspects of this use of contractors, is that the true costs of the war only show up in the bottom line, not in the numbers of actual casualties. Deaths of contract employees affects the insurance claims of the contractor, but are not counted as casualties in the Iraqi war effort. Another issue with contractors, is that they pay more money for their employees than does our military.

And what drives the contractors? Is it to accomplish a peaceful exit out of Iraq? What is their incentive? The war has made millionaires out of contractors in Iraq. Perpetual war is what will gain them future profits. And certainly, among there will be a supply of retired military personnel who will seek to make a fortune playing in this war for profit, rather than democracy.
We as a nation need to be very careful before we start privatizing the functions that have been served by our military. Our military personnel swear an oath to our country to protect us. Contractors sign a “contract” with specifications that may be vague or hard to enforce. And in the end, are we really happy to have a security company with it’s own para-military force that is committed to the Neo-con wing of the Republican party? If the war ever ends, what will be the role of these companies and their employees? I see many scenarios that should send a shiver down your spine if you believe in our Republic.

Is Political Retaliation a Concern?

Yes it is. Let's leave it at that.

And the Winner Is?

Iran. The ill-conceived invasion of Iraq has certainly benefitted Iran. The United States not only toppled Iran's most hated enemy, but replaced it with a government friendly to Iran. It has befuddled me for some time why Bush has been so involved in saber-rattling at Iran, when the current government of Iraq is really Iran's best regional ally. Then an article comes out from Salon.com from Peter Galbraith that really put the pieces together for me and confirmed my befuddlement.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/24/Iran/index.html

Bush prides himself on being a decider who bases his decisions on instinct. I've had it up to my eyeballs with Bush's instinct. I wish he'd pick up a book or talk to someone in the know instead of basing his policies on ignorance based hubris.

Ok, I feel much better now.

Understanding America's 9/11 Response

The events of 9/11/2001 were clearly the most defining of this young century. The United States before and after seem like different countries in subtle ways. Where we stand as a people in our relative trade-offs between liberty and security has been altered and in ways that seem almost unbelievable. Many of the same people who don't trust government to provide public services, have turned over liberties to their government and put increasing power into the executive branch in order to make us feel more secure.

America's response to 9/11 in my opinion was an over-reaction. The losses on this date were traumatic and hard to watch. All Americans will remember watching the towers collapse, knowing that they were watching the sudden oblivion of lives in real time. However, this attack was more symbolic than devastating to a country as large and wealthy as the United States. It is like a bee sting causing an elephant to run off a cliff to it's peril. We as Americans need to understand this, but we must never forget the lessons of leadership, or lack thereof, that influenced this.

To contrast leadership in similar situations, let's evaluate another traumatic event that was in fact more damaging to the United States, namely Pearl Harbor. Franklin Delano Roosevelt displayed all the steely resolve that Americans need to feel from their President, but Roosevelt played upon America's strength to get them through this difficult time. Our current President seems to have preyed upon the fear of Americans. While FDR was saying, "there is nothing to fear, but fear itself", Bush seemed to be saying, "be afraid, be very afraid, and by the way, let's give more emergency powers to the executive branch." FDR used his leadership to inspire Americans to succeed. Bush used the fear Americans felt against them for his own political objectives.

Understanding America's response and miscues after 9/11 define where we are as a nation and explains the challenges we now face in far off places on our globe. The two most influential books I've read on this period are "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks and "The One Percent Doctrine" by Ron Suskind.

We as a people must come to grips with what has happened to our country and find ways to retake what we have lost. Failure to do so has allowed Osama bin ladin to influence who we are and what we are about. He is a man not deserving of that honor.

I'm Moving Down South

Atleast for a week, I will be south of the border in Los Cabos. In a nice combination of business and pleasure, I will attend some meetings, but also attend to the beach, the pool and some site-seeing around the area. Hopefully the area will have recovered from Hurricane Hennriette which crashed right into the town.

While gone, I have no intention of blogging. My laptop may be with me, but my focus will not be on blogging but on enjoying he experience. So until I return, may the farce be with you.

Why I Oppose Vouchers

In this post, I will outline my reasons for opposing the use of publicly funded vouchers for private school education.

1- I am opposed to using public money to promote a religious agenda. When you look who is supporting vouchers and why, it is apparent to me that one of the driving forces behind this movement is to provide public funding to Christian or Mormon schools. Supporters may counter that not allowing vouchers means the government is funding a secular or atheistic agenda. I disagree. Nothing I ever saw in the public schools promoted atheism or secularism. I just don't buy the argument that failure to fund someone's religious agenda is by default a funding of someone else's agenda.

2- Public funding in my view requires that there be public control. Right now, I vote for members of my school board. I have influence over how they prioritize both the placements of schools as well s the curriculum used. The degree to which I or other taxpayers would have control over private schools which receive public funding is questionable and indirect. I also question whether private schools want any degree of oversight. I also question whether or not our state education establishment is prepared to develop auditing programs to ensure that private schools are following public guidelines that should be inherent in public funding.

3- Those who will gain the most immediate benefit from vouchers are those who can already afford to send their kids to private schools. Given Utah's generally regressive tax structure, how can you justify giving out a payout from public funds to those in the highest income brackets from middle to low-income taxpayers? Frankly, you can't.

4- Vouchers will generally only provide people with considerable funds available to consider private schooling as an option. For those in lower income situations, the voucher will never be enough to provide a true choice to send their kids to private schools.

5- Competition between private and public schools is over-rated and has many drawbacks to the public objective of having a well-educated citizenry. Private schools will have several advantages in this "competition" that very well may undermine public education as a whole. Private schools can deny kids on the basis of academics, whereas public schools cannot. Would private schools be required to accept kids with disabilities such as mild autism, ADHD, or kids with other problems? What will this mean for public funding for kids with various disabilities? If public schools find themselves losing the competition, what options will be available to them to make up the difference? Private schools can go to the capital markets to obtain new resources. What if legislators are unwilling to fund the needs of public schools in order to allow them to be competitive?

6- On what basis would a voucher be denied to students who enroll in a school. Example, let's say an Islamic fundamentalist group establishes a private school for their children to teach them jihad against the west, weapons and explosives training, and terrorist tactics? Without proper overshights, have we as a country just funded our own demise?

7- I find it interesting that so many Utahns who find socialism in every government program, fail to see it when there becomes public funding of private enterprise. I think we as a society should always be cautious about providing public funding for private businesses. Competition between the private and public sectors can have good results. FEDEX, UPS and other delivery companies directly compete with the United States Postal Service. However, public funding is not, and should not, be used to fund UPS or FEDEX. The same is true for private schools.

8- Why should public funds go to a private school that may in fact be discriminatory? Getting back to religious schools, is it reasonable to assume that a Mormon school would require some sort of approval process in order for a student to matriculate there? Same with a Christian, Muslim or Jewish school. What if a Christian school right accross the street from an atheist denies a child's application on the basis of the child's parents outspoken belief that Christianity is bogus?

9- My final concern deals with the social consequences of dividing ourselves on the basis of one critieria or another. If Christians only deal with Christians, Mormons with Mormons, the rich with the rich, will we be able to empathize and appreciate others. Public schools bring together a cross-section of kids and place them together. If someone wants to exclude their kids from association with the wider world, that is their prerogative, but I don't believe that exclusion should be publicly funded.

10- Because I believe the most important priority we as a society should be making is ensuring we have as high a quality education as possible that is available to everyone. I believe vouchers have more of a down-side to this objective and it takes away the focus all of us should have on making public schools better. To me it is a punt on second down when we should be devising the right play and the right execution, we are kicking the ball to the opposition and hoping they do something with it.