(Updated) Ron Paul calls BP victim compensation a ‘PR stunt’

* Updated the headline: I originally wrote that Rand Paul said the following statement. It was actually his equally oblivious father, Ron. The rest of the article is really about Rand’s previous statements that illustrated how disengaged he is from average Americans, and his sense of entitlement that probably comes from his awful dad, whose terribleness is demonstrated in the quote.

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At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rand Paul turned out to be a DNC plant.

BP’s $20 billion escrow fund is a “PR stunt” that came about through a “suspicious” process, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said Tuesday night.

Though Paul didn’t go as far as fellow Texan Rep. Joe Barton (R), who called the fund a “shakedown,” he nevertheless said the “process is sort of suspicious.”

“They have agreed to this and this is sort of a PR stunt as far as I’m concerned,” Paul told Fox News. “BP had already been making a lot of payments to people who had been injured.”

He said this… on television…while the crisis is still happening.

This follows Rand’s comments about unemployed people being a bunch of lazy shit sacks, who are too “picky” and insist on passing up all kinds of sweet, sweet employment opportunities (like the jobs that don’t offer benefits or a living wage).

The nation’s other non-BP disasters

Surely, the BP disaster deserves the obsessive coverage it has received (thus far). But at the risk of missing some other important stories, I want to briefly address two somewhat overlooked catastrophes – one that has already taken place, and one that possesses the potential to be horrific, but we still have time to stop.

Many Americans would be surprised to hear there’s another domestic oil spill – in Salt Late City. (via)

Chevron says a hole the size of a quarter caused their pipeline to rupture around 33,000 gallons of oil into the creek.

The manager of Chevron’s refinery in the Salt Lake City area said Monday that the company believes the rupture in the 10-inch pipeline was caused by an electrical arc that traveled through a metal fence post. Mark Sullivan says the arc acted like an electrical torch, causing the hole.

Sullivan couldn’t say how long the pipeline was leaking before Chevron was notified of the problem Saturday morning. But Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker says residents could smell the odor of petroleum overnight Friday.

The spill has coated about 300 birds at area creeks and ponds, and the oil is possibly threatening an endangered fish.

Chairman of the Salt Lake City Council,  J.T. Martin, calls the event a horrible tragedy.

BP stonewalling efforts to get better oil volcano damage estimate

A bird covered in oil flails in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The other day, I was discussing the “branding” of the BP disaster with a friend. Calling this catastrophe a “spill” seems like a laughable understatement, and my phrasing (the “oil geyser”) wasn’t really catchy. A few weeks ago, the term “oil volcano” emerged, I think because it was first used by Rachel Maddow, and I believe it captures the severity of the situation.

So this thing, the oil volcano, has been pumping thousands of barrels of oil into the ocean every single day. That much is undeniable. BP can’t approach the media and say, “Epic disaster is all over, folks!” because there are cameras (now HD video) down there, filming the whole thing.

The company attempted to use dispersants (hundreds of thousands of gallons of the toxic stuff) in order to coagulate the oil and sink it to the bottom, conveniently hiding the true toll of the oil volcano from the world. Except, that didn’t work entirely, and some endangered birds got snagged in the sludge.

Literally, there is nothing BP can now do in order to mend its public image except lie. And lie they have. Tony Hayward blamed workers’ illnesses on food poisoning instead of acknowledging exposure to oil fumes and dispersants tend to make individuals sick. BP denied the existence of those massive underwater oil plumes. You know, the ones NOAA just confirmed exist.

Canadian government dumping toxic waste in Arctic

Colin Horgan follows up on an article I wrote about BP racing up to Canada in order to get northern legislators to deregulate their industry (because that worked out super well in America). This time, the villain is the Canadian government itself.

After two years and a request under the Access to Information Act, the Canadian Press has revealed that there have been numerous toxic spills and dumps in the Arctic, and that “one of the most frequent offenders is the federal government.”

The CP report continues:

The analysis found 260 spills in the North over five years. There were 137 spills in the Northwest Territories, 82 in Nunavut and 41 in the Yukon.

The biggest spill happened in Nunavut two years ago. Residents of Hall Beach marked Canada Day in 2008 with a dike failure that released 13.5 million litres of sewage in their remote hamlet.

Environment Canada says sewage seeped out of a lagoon into a wetlands area. The sewage didn’t make it into any bodies of water where fish could be affected.

[…]

Some spills took weeks or even months to clean up, while others were dealt with in a day or less.

BP: The media’s Katrina

President Tony Hayward

The President and the media can’t help BP rush through the unpleasantness of poisoning the ocean quickly enough. First, the government (starting with Bush, but extending through Obama’s reign) staffed the MMS with incompetents, who apparently alternated between allowing oil and gas company workers to fill out their own inspection forms, accepting Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl tickets from offshore drilling companies, and smoking crystal meth.

What I’m trying to say is, the MMS was extremely busy, which is probably why they didn’t notice BP’s blowout preventer had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a “useless” test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil in the event of a fiery explosion, which by the way, totally happened. But who has time to check superfluous stuff like a blowout preventer? I mean, that meth isn’t going to smoke itself.

BP has shown a desire to cover its own ass by allegedly forbidding clean-up crews to wear respirators so as to avoid future negligence lawsuits even as it continues to dump toxic dispersants, which have been banned in the UK, ignoring the EPA’s pleas to find a less toxic (and extremely available) version.

Damning Bloomberg Article Reveals Geithner As Incompetent

Yalman Onaran and Michael McKee, Bloomberg News

It was 2004 and Tim Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had a message for the Federal Open Market Committee in Washington. He told his 18 colleagues gathered around the long mahogany table that a clearinghouse was needed to monitor risks in the burgeoning $5 trillion market for credit-default swaps — the over-the-counter derivatives that would later spin out of control and help take down Wall Street.

In a move that may have foreshadowed his role as President Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary, Geithner over the next two years nudged financial firms to voluntarily clear a backlog of swap trades. They stopped short of creating a clearinghouse to bring more transparency to the market.

“Geithner was making noise on reining in derivatives, but he didn’t push hard enough,” says Jane D’Arista, a former economist at the Congressional Budget Office in Washington and a longtime Fed observer. “Maybe he’ll be more forceful now that he’s in a position with real power. But I’m not so sure.”

From his years as a Dartmouth College student and mid-level Treasury official through his stint at the New York Fed, Geithner, 47, has thrived as a backroom negotiator and conciliator. Now, as he struggles to rescue Wall Street from a crisis that happened on his regulatory watch, investors and economists question whether the 75th Treasury secretary can transform himself into a bold leader equal to the challenges ahead.

Wall Street executives have cheered Geithner’s nomination.

Brief Honeymoon

“Treasury Secretary Geithner possesses the intelligence and experience needed to partner with President Obama and his economic team to lead us to a recovery,” says Robert Wolf, head of UBS AG’s Americas unit based in Stamford, Connecticut.

The rookie secretary has already learned that the honeymoon won’t last long. After Geithner presented a $2.5 trillion financial rescue plan on Feb. 10, the Dow Jones Industrials tumbled 4.6 percent because investors found it bereft of details. Geithner also gave no indication that he would act quickly to dismantle the weakest of the banks, a move that Joseph Mason, a former bank regulator who teaches finance at Louisiana State University, says he should take now.

Japan prolonged its credit crunch and recession for almost a decade before it finally nationalized two of its biggest banks, the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan and Nippon Credit Bank, in 1998.

“The key to all our problems is the zombie banks,” Mason says. “We’re giving them money, which is not going to solve anything. We’re repeating the mistakes of Japan, which wasted a decade by not moving decisively against its zombie banks.”

Henry Morgenthau

No Treasury secretary since Henry Morgenthau, who served from 1934 to ‘45 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, has faced so many crises at once. After receiving $800 billion in loans, guarantees and capital injections since October, the financial industry is still hunkered down, unwilling or unable to put the wind back into the sails of capitalism. Geithner played a role in shaping the $787 billion stimulus plan, and now he and Lawrence Summers, head of the National Economic Council, must recommend to President Obama whether to give General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC an additional $14 billion in loans on top of the $17.4 billion Bush administration bailout or force them into bankruptcy. At the White House, the new Treasury secretary may have to compete for the president’s attention with Summers, his former mentor, and Paul Volcker, who has been clamoring for more power as chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Methodical Style

Geithner’s strengths — his methodical style and bureaucratic savvy — were honed over 21 years in government, as he dealt with crises from Asia to New York.

“He really understands process and decision making and how to advance an agenda,” says Michael Froman, who was former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s chief of staff. “Some people are just better at it than others, not just having the big idea but breaking it down into the several dozen steps that need to make it work. That’s Tim.”

The Treasury secretary’s experience at the New York Fed from 2003 to ‘08 gave him an inside view of Wall Street that will help him choose the best remedies for today’s crisis, says Alex Pollock, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a former president of the Chicago Federal Home Loan Bank. “He’s very well qualified,” Pollock says.

‘He’s Not Change’

Keep reading…

Iceland on the Brink

The Independent

Two years ago, Iceland was top of the UN living index. Now it is in the frontline of the global economic crisis after the failure of its banks, reports Sophie Morris in Reykjavik.

Just a few short years ago, Iceland had much to be proud of. The good times were rolling so fast that one expected the country’s almost round-the-clock summer daylight to last all year. Business was booming, society overfed, and the capital, Reykjavik, was in vogue as a travel destination for rich revellers, gastronomes and culture lovers.

Iceland is a country of dramatic natural beauty: lunar landscapes, spouting geysers, sheer glaciers and craggy volcanic rock formations; an impressive but inhospitable isle floating in mid-Atlantic isolation. When, in 2007, it topped the UN’s Human Development Index for its high standard of living, literacy and life expectancy, the tiny community of 310,000 felt they had proved their educated, hard-working and resilient character on an international scale.

The previous year, America had abandoned its long-standing naval air station at Keflavik. Symbolically, the move set Icelanders free from more than seven centuries of foreign domination, first as a Norwegian and then a Danish colony, and for the past 65 years, less formally, under the wing of the US.

“The Vikings” had risen again, and this is the admiring title the country bestowed upon the small group of aggressive businessmen whose high-risk investing bloated the island’s economy to 10 times its GDP, buying up chunks of the British and Continental European high streets in the process. French Connection, Debenhams, Karen Millen, Oasis, Warehouse, Mappin & Webb, Hamleys and many more fell into Icelandic ownership. So did West Ham United football club. When Icelanders visited Copenhagen, they would strut into its smartest department store to buy expensive fashions from “their” shop. Like many British chains, it too was owned by the “Viking” Jon Asgeir Johannesson’s Baugur group: one in the eye for the mother country.

Few stopped to consider, let alone fret over, whether their swift financial ascent would end in an equally steep plunge into oblivion. They were too busy flying to Barcelona for dinner, opening smart boutique hotels, investing in art, planning massive public buildings and buying Range Rovers and Audi Q7s – Iceland is one of the top car-owning countries in the world.

In October, Iceland’s three main banks were nationalised and declared bankrupt. Overnight, any Icelander – and there were many – who had bought these status vehicles or invested in luxury new properties with a foreign loan found the value of their purchases plummeting as repayments soared. The currency, the Krona, fell to one quarter its value before trading in it was suspended. Thousands of hard-working couples nearing retirement age had placed their life savings in stocks with the Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing banks which led the crash. For many, every penny disappeared into the turbulent waters which connect Iceland with its American and European neighbours.

Frugal Icelanders have been stung too. Food and petrol costs are rising all the time and with interest rates nearing 20 per cent, domestic mortgages, even modest ones, are becoming impossible to service.

“The feeling is we are unable to look after our own affairs” says Hallgrimur Helgason, one of the country’s leading novelists. “We were on our own for years and we went too far, too fast, in too little time. We behaved like children and the first thing we did when the stock market opened 10 years ago was go to London and buy toy stores and candy stores. Now we are bankrupt and there will be no money for years to come and we have more debts than we can ever repay.

“We’re just like kids whose parents went away for the weekend and we trashed the entire house.”

There is no word from the government yet on how it plans to repair the damage. What does that mean for the man on the streets of a country whose coffers are empty? Are we talking soup kitchens, sheltered housing and begging on street corners? Far from it. If you’re as comfortable as Iceland was, the rot has its work cut out before it emerges on the surface.

The streets of the capital are clean and the people could not be more hospitable or charming. On Friday and Saturday nights, a succession of bars and clubs are packed out. Judging by the drunken state of most people, they are still spending money here.

Iceland’s troubles did reveal themselves during last week’s tumultuous events. Peaceful demonstrations began in Reykjavik’s main square, outside the Althing (parliament) building, had begun in October immediately after the crash. Last week they erupted in the worst riots since it became a founding member of Nato in 1949. Rocks were hurled at police and the Althing. Its windows were smashed and the building set alight. Over 130 protesters received treatment after police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and one police officer was seriously injured.

On Friday morning, human rights campaigner and protest organiser Hordur Torfason told a chilling anecdote to illustrate the desperation many Icelanders are feeling. He had received a phone call from a man who said that four generations of his family had lost everything. “He wanted me to help them build a gallows in front of the parliament building,” says Torfason. “I asked him if this was to have some symbolic significance. ‘No,’ came the answer. ‘A member of my family wants to hang himself in public.'”

“I said I would help them but not in this way,” says Torfason. “But he killed himself two days ago.”

Red Cross employees and volunteers are working overtime to prepare for depression and desperation. The relief agency has expanded and is setting up support groups and activities for the unemployed. “One of the effects of long-term unemployment is depression,” says the agency’s Thor Gislason.

More people are attending church, he says, not just for spiritual succour, but because food is sometimes provided for a nominal charge. Soup kitchens, emblematic of Eastern bloc poverty, might be going too far. “We believe people will be too ashamed to stand in line publicly for food,” says Gislason, “so we will organise activities and volunteer work where food is involved instead.”

Icelanders are known for their love of good food. Now is the beginning of a month when people celebrate local cuisine by dining out on traditional dishes, but one smart restaurant with a menu featuring pickled whale blubber, whale sushi and peppered whale steaks, cod liver, pickled herring, smoked puffin breast, reindeer meat and caviar, is empty save a handful of foreign diners. Panorama, a new gourmet restaurant on the top floor of the Centerhotel Arnarhvoll, has magnificent views over Reykjavik’s harbour but is equally subdued. Over in Reykjavik’s 101 Hotel, owned by the “Viking” tycoon Jon Asgeir Johannesson and renowned as a favourite haunt of champagne-loving Kaupthing bankers, there are a few suits and little else.

As many as 8,000 people braved the damp cold to demonstrate last week, the largest number to attend a public protest in the history of Iceland. On Friday, the Prime Minister, Geir Haarde, who has cancer, called an election for9 May and announced that he will not run again. Yet protesters called for his immediate resignation on Saturday. The government’s efforts amount to too little, too late, they say. They want parliament dissolved, a new constitution, and an investigation of those politicians they believe accountable. “Every other person is basically bankrupt,” said organiser Magnus Bjorn Olafsson. “This is a revolution and we want to create a new constitution like the French did.”

All walks of life were evident at the protests; well-heeled Icelanders with their designer coats and dogs were as prevalent as any other group. For many, like Gudbjorg Bjornsdottir, 47, and Runar Mar Sverisson, 50, it was their first experience of protesting. “We thought it was time we showed our support,” says Bjornsdottir, “It is not enough to sit at home. We are not here for our personal situation but for the injustice.”

Asgerdur Einarsdottir, 43, attended a party last week attended mostly by architects and graphic designers. She was the only one there to have a job. She works in Iceland’s remaining steady industry, tourism, for a tour operator which provides visitors with thrills such as snowmobiling up a glacier or driving through lava fields.

Before the crash, Iceland was prohibitively expensive. It is now far more accessible to foreigners but the running costs of her firm, owned by the parents of Barcelona striker Eidur Gudjohnsen, have gone up 110 per cent, and they are losing the lucrative business of indulgent corporate jollies.

On Reykjavik’s main shopping street, Laugavegur, bargains are suddenly to be found: in Saevar Karl, a designer department store, most items are 40 per cent off. Its manager, Tomas Tomasson, notes that Iceland is now the cheapest place in the world to buy Prada.

Everyone blames greed, political corruption and lack of financial regulation for the mess, but most know they must share responsibility. “I feel partly to blame myself,” admits writer Helgason. “We admired the brashness of the Vikings and we all got carried away. We are a young and immature society.”

Torfason says: “Things are bad and they will get much worse. But it is unlikely anyone will starve. There are people with no fixed address here, but none on the street; you would freeze to death. There is no call to be desperate. We are small but we have resources.”

This much is true. The seas are full of fish, geothermal energy and natural gas are abundant. Oil prospecting is beginning. But there is a risk that Iceland will give its riches away in a fire sale to the same Vikings who have already half-sunk the nation once.

Iceland has survived famine, volcanic eruptions and smallpox before. Now it must confront the fact that it has been blighted by a man-made disaster.

Iceland: The facts

*Population: 313,376

*Currency: Icelandic Krona (ISK)

*Unemployment in October 2008 1.9%; January 2009: 7%. Expected to rise to 8.6% in 2010.

*Inflation: 13.1%

*Interest rates 18%

*GDP per capita in 2007: $42,000

*GDP per capita now: $39,400

*The world’s eighteenth largest island, Iceland has nearly 5,000km of coastline.

*Iceland’s natural resources include geothermal power and diatomite, many rivers and waterfalls are used for hydroelectricity.

*Did not gain full independence from Denmark until 1944. Granted limited home rule in 1874.

*Althing, the Icelandic parliament, is the oldest functioning legislative assembly in the world, which was established in 930.

*In 2007 Iceland was ranked the most developed country in the world by the UN.

*The Apollo 11 astronauts trained in Iceland because of the terrain’s similarity to the moon.

You Heart Corruption

“‘Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.’ That’s Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize! We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it! Corruption is our protection! Corruption keeps us safe and warm! Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets! Corruption is why we win!”

The quote is from the film Syriana, and the character that delivers the passionate/delusional diatribe is Danny Dalton, a Texas oilman and member of Committee to Liberate Iran. Dalton is a patsy, and is being charged with “corruption” in order to protect a much larger, much more corrupt corporation standing behind him. He’s a fall-guy, and that’s why he flies off the handle.

Watching the Bush administration and Wall Street executives’ gulp and thrash like beached fish made me think of little Dalton. The stock market isn’t a force of nature. It takes men and women (but mostly men) creating very corrupt policies to create America’s initial wealth, and then her downfall.

Everyone needs to stop acting like they’re surprised by the recession. It’s not cute, and it’s painfully insincere.

There’s been a proliferation of handwringing and philosophizing about what caused the economic collapse, why there was little impetus to aggressively address a rotting subprime industry, why our politicians were too lazy, slow, or indifferent to do something to address Wall Street’s broken ways.

Times of economic woes are the only time our society collectively examines the Free Market, and the effects of globalization — rarely on the world — but on us, Americans. How will this screw us? How long will it last? How will this vast machine affect us parochially?

Americans pretend like this is the others’ problem, and that they don’t also benefit from our corrupt society. Wall Street practices are certainly corrupt, but the problem isn’t contained to mortgage lenders, banks, and insurance companies. It’s pandemic and it has infected every facet of the American way of life.

The dirty truth no one wants to admit is that corruption floats America to the top. Only by utilizing cheap labor, deregulation, and speculative lending can our markets create extraordinary wealth. Wall Street occasionally acts as though it has just awoken from a strange nightmare because it’s necessary to act moral every now and then, namely when the press shows up.

Now is the time financial experts act like they have no idea how market bubbles inflate, CEOs get bonuses 100 times their annual salaries, and people like Bernie Madoff exist.

Regulation is trendy right now, but what that actually entails may surprise Americans. If our government seriously regulated the Free Market, and extended that moral behavior to the international community with living wages and humane worker conditions, it would profoundly change the way Americans live.

The price of our food, clothing, and other goods would increase. Fuel would skyrocket. Everything would be more expensive, and we would have to do with a lot less. CEOs would surrender their penthouses and yachts. Certain exotic fruits like bananas would suddenly cost much more now that Central American workers are permitted to unionize and demand living wages.

On the plus side, maybe less children would die and more people could have a shot at stability and happiness. Maybe cases of infectious disease would decline. Maybe people would drive less. Maybe we could save the world.

Of course, Americans would have to sacrifice, and they have a history of hating that. But things are changing now. There’s a murmur in this society, and it seems to be saying: Our way of life is broken. We need to fundamentally change the way we live.

People want regulation. They want less enormous wealth and extraordinary poverty. They want balance and justice. But they have to stop looking to the men that made the corruption to fix the problem. Americans have to demand the presence of independent sheriffs to watch industry 24/7 in order to right the wrongs of our corrupt past.

If regulation actually existed, things would be a lot less cushy for Americans, which would probably be a good thing, but some may suddenly miss that corruption that kept them so sheltered for so long.

Bush Pushes Through Last-Minute Deregulations

 Democracy Now! 

As the media focuses on President-elect Obama and the transition of power here in Washington, the Bush administration is quietly trying to push through a wide array of federal regulations before President Bush leaves office in January.

Up to ninety proposed regulations could be finalized by the outgoing administration, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment. According to the Washington Post, the new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era. They include rules that could weaken workplace safety protections, allow local police to spy in the so-called “war on terror” and make it easier for federal agencies to ignore the Endangered Species Act.

While it’s nothing new for outgoing administrations to try and enact these so-called “midnight regulations,” the Bush administration has accelerated the process to ensure the changes it wants will be finalized by November 22nd. That’s sixty days before the next administration takes control. Most federal rules go into effect sixty days after they’ve been finalized, and it would be a major bureaucratic undertaking for the Obama administration to reverse federal rules already in effect.

We speak to Matthew Madia of the watchdog group OMB Watch.

See the video here.

ACORN: They Took Our Nuts!

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has come under recent scrutiny for their involvement in voter registration fraud. However, the accusation of “voter fraud” is misleading because the fraudulent forms in question were submitted to the government by ACORN. It takes a particularly dumb criminal to turn himself in…before a crime has actually been committed. Also, unless “Mickey Mouse” shows up to vote in November, the forged form with a voter registered as the famous Disney mouse remains an example of “registration fraud,” and not “voter fraud.” No vote has been cast, so no real harm has been done.

It is ACORN’s policy that any case of form fraud has to be flagged, reported, and delivered to the government, along with the employee who forged the document.

Because so many vicious rumors are circulating about the organization, here is first a brief summary of what ACORN does. The group is a grassroots organization that fights for basic citizen rights, such as the right for affordable housing and the right to vote. ACORN has led communities around the country to rally behind living wage ordinances. These ordinances often require employers to pay not just the minimum wage, but a living wage, which is an important distinction for anyone who has ever had to choose between buying their medicine and paying the heating bill.

ACORN has been very successful in helping to implement the “living wage standard.” More than 70 communities have now adopted this standard.

Lately, the media has focused on the voter registration sector of ACORN’s work. According to the organization, since 2004, ACORN has helped more than 1.7 million low- and moderate-income and minority citizens apply to register to vote. As we know by now, poor people overwhelming vote Democrat.

Some other ACORN tasks include fighting predatory lending, finding affordable housing for poor people (predominately black people and Hispanic people,) providing Katrina relief, improving public education, and fighting for stricter gun control laws.

It seems like a strange coincidence that ACORN, a group focused on community organization, regulation, and empowering poor citizens of color is now the focus of attacks from an administration famous for gutting government programs and neutering the public sector in favor of privatization.

The Bush administration gets a hard-on for profit. If any government job can be outsourced to the private market, the Bushies gut social spending, even if it ultimately means sacrificing quality of service. Just look at the basic example of the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. Caring for veterans is a staple service of any civilized government, and yet that job was outsourced to a private company. A five-year $120 million contract was given to a company called IAP, which was chaired by a former executive from Halliburton, the multi-national corporation where Vice President Dick Cheney once served as CEO.

Another example of the Bush administration’s preference for privatization over public service is the treatment of the U.S. Post Office. If you haven’t been to a public post office in a while, let me paint a picture for you: Imagine a leper colony post-nuclear annihilation. Under the Bushies’ watchful eyes, U.S. post offices facilities have closed and government jobs have been destroyed. Meanwhile, Bush reminds us that he’s a fan of deregulation, while he visits a FedEx facility.

No shit. Yet again, Bush chose profit over community. Now, the GOP is going after one of the largest community organizations in the country. Americans have come to expect this kind of cronyism and privatization and total negligence from the Bush administration, but citizens don’t seem to be connecting the dots when it comes to the ongoing harassment of ACORN.

Unknown parties have broken into ACORN’s Boston offices, and their workers have been threatened. Someone seems to want the entire organization to pack up and go home.

The perpetrators of these crimes have not been identified. Meanwhile, the GOP continues the discrediting process of ACORN. It does behoove the McCain campaign, and any future Republican campaign, to discredit ACORN, one of the largest voter registration organizations and low-income mobilization forces. If ACORN’s reputation is sullied now, it will be easier for Republicans to make the argument that more ACORN-provided registration forms should be tossed out in the future.

Getting rid of ACORN will be another feather in the Bush administration’s cap. This grassroots community organizing machines runs in direct conflict with the Bush dream of a privatized planet. ACORN demands housing regulation at a time when the Bush administration is still trying to clean up the mess from years of market deregulation. ACORN demands representation for poor minorities (who overwhelmingly vote Democrat) during a time when McCain is desperately clawing for votes in states that are normally Republican strongholds. ACORN demands good public schooling at a time when McCain is hollowing out schools with his vouchers that will effectively rob poor children of a chance at public, secular education and stick them in private classrooms with religious agendas.

In the midst of all this, ACORN has been labeled a terrorist group with suspicious motives. Is anyone surprised? No wonder the GOP is desperately trying to neuter ACORN before the group manages to mobilize some seriously pissed-off, poor people.