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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (350230)	9/11/2007 2:11:08 PM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585849

Sort of like Iraq before we invaded? Unfortunately, it will be decades before Iraq is as stable or prosperous as the Saddam era. Mission accomplished, because the destruction of Iraq WAS THE GOAL of the Neocons when they hoodwinked Bush into this invasion. Some interesting poll results: <<< Iraqis are more opposed to the American presence than ever, do not think the surge has accomplished either its military or its political goals, and have dwindling confidence in the US forces. You'll recall that the explicit purpose of the surge was to create the conditions for political dialogue. 70% see "conditions for political dialogue" as having gotten worse in the last six months. >>> abuaardvark.typepad.com Tom

To: Road Walker who wrote (350230)	9/11/2007 2:19:31 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1585849

Why won't Hillary release list of her donation bundlers? A Bundle of Trouble You wouldn't want to be in Hsu's of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. opinionjournal.com September 10, 2007 Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are fund-raising powerhouses. On Saturday alone, Mr. Obama scooped up $3 million at a gala hosted by Oprah Winfrey. The candidates are happy to tout their cash hauls. Just don't ask them to identify the contributors whose money disgraced donor Norman Hsu delivered to their campaigns. Both campaigns are donating to charity the limited direct contributions Mr. Hsu made to them. But Mr. Hsu's influence went far deeper. In 2005, he helped host a California fund-raiser for Mr. Obama, where he introduced the senator to Mark Gorenberg, a venture capitalist who is now one of Mr. Obama's biggest fund-raisers. Mr. Hsu later became one of Mrs. Clinton's top bundlers--powerbrokers who collect many small donations for delivery to candidates. He brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars to her and other Democratic causes. The Wall Street Journal reports that many of the contributions came from "people who had no prior history of political giving or obvious means for paying." Take the Paw family of Daly City, Calif., which is headed by a mail carrier who makes $49,000 a year. Members of the family have given almost $300,000 to politicians, including Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, since 2004, often on or about the same days that Mr. Hsu gave money. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether any Hsu donors were illegally reimbursed for their contributions. Bundlers are now very much in the news. All the major GOP candidates have had their own controversies involving bundlers. Last month, Geoffrey Fieger, the trial lawyer who was the 1998 Democratic nominee for Michigan governor, was indicted on charges he conspired to make more than $125,000 in illegal bundled contributions to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Edwards. Back then Mr. Edwards flatly refused to identify his bundlers. Such scandals were part of what prompted Congress to pass an ethics reform bill that is now on President Bush's desk. It would require all campaigns to disclose the identities of bundlers who are lobbyists and bring in over $15,000 in any six-month period. Both Sens. Clinton and Obama voted for the bill, and Mr. Obama would like to go further. Last week, he announced he will introduce legislation to require campaigns to disclose the identity of all bundlers and the amounts they bring in. But any new disclosure laws wouldn't cover donations made before they're enacted. Mr. Obama is sending letters of inquiry to five donors publicly identified in the media as linked to Mr. Hsu, but his campaign says it doesn't have any records of any other possible Hsu-linked donors, even though Mr. Hsu has told friends he was careful always to let the campaigns know which contributions he had brought in. As for Mrs. Clinton, her spokesman Howard Wolfson told the Los Angeles Times that she was declining to release the names of her bundled donors. No wonder. The Clinton campaign has been frequently beset by contributors running afoul of the law. Last week, a leading Clinton supporter and fund-raiser in New Jersey, Mayor Samuel Rivera of Passaic, was arrested on bribery charges in an FBI sting operation. In March, businessman Abdul Rehman "Ray" Jinnah fled the country after being indicted on charges he funneled illegal contributions to Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats. All of this recalls the 1996 Bill Clinton fund-raising scandal, which ultimately led to 22 guilty pleas on various violations of election laws. Among the Clinton fundraisers and friends who pleaded guilty were John Huang, Charlie Trie, James Riady and Michael Brown, son of the late Clinton commerce secretary Ron Brown. But a lot was never learned, even after the revelations that Mr. Clinton had personally authorized offering donors use of the Lincoln Bedroom and Oval Office meetings. A total of 120 participants in the fund-raising scandal either fled the country, asserted their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, or otherwise avoided questioning. A 1998 Senate Government Affairs Committee report on the scandal found "strong circumstantial evidence" that a great deal of foreign money had illegally entered the country in an attempt to influence the 1996 election. Johnny Chung, a bagman for the Asian billionaire Riady family, confessed that at least $35,000 of his donations to the Clinton campaign and the DNC had come from a Chinese aerospace executive--a lieutenant colonel in the Chinese military who he said helped Mr. Chung meet three times with General Ji Shengde, the head of Chinese military intelligence. Mr. Chung testified that Gen. Shengde had told him, "We like your president very much. We would like to see him re-elected. I will give you $300,000 U.S.. You can give it to the president and the Democratic Party." Clinton defenders suggest that those who make comparisons between the sloppy vetting of Mrs. Clinton's 2008 campaign and her husband's 1996 scandal are bigots because of the presence of Asian names in both cases. Margaret Fung, director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, says any comparison "insinuates" that Asian-Americans are more prone to making illegal donations and represents an "obsession" with Asian donors. Nonsense. It shows that Team Clinton seems to have a recurring problem vetting its donors. It seems to have learned nothing from its 1996 experience, and just may be repeating it. The failure to disclose Mr. Hsu's contribution network by Mrs. Clinton is significant. "It would paint a map for the press--if it was interested--of who Hsu is and what he was attempting to gain," says radio host Hugh Hewitt. That Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama talk such a good game about the need for disclosure of bundlers and their activities and yet won't or can't reveal any information about Mr. Hsu's network of donors is yet more evidence of why we should pay attention to what politicians do, not what they say.<

To: Road Walker who wrote (350230)	9/11/2007 3:45:46 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585849

This is typical of the opposition that at least western cities have to overcome to get mass transit built. This guy has been in the trans. biz for 45 years so you know where his loyalties lie. In case you don't.....you will after he points out that the Seattle metro area is spending 52% of every transit dollar on public transit......which, of course, is playing catchup after years of building only freeways. Forget that both our two sister cities......Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR.....have sizeable mass transist/public transportation systems in place. Forget that Portland is starting on its third light rail line while Seattle is still working on its first. Forget that Portland is half the size of Seattle. Forget that traffic here is becoming more and more a mess [and is noticeably worse than when I arrived here 7 years ago]. Forget that Seattle metro residents have repeatedly voted to have more mass transit. This guy still wants the focus to be roads. I guess you have to hope these guys will retire soon. Don't believe the hype: Tri-county transit package is flawed By Jim MacIsaac Special to The Times In November, voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties will decide on a joint roads-and-transit package that seeks all-or-nothing approval of new taxes to support the transportation needs of the three-county region. What is touted as a "balanced" roads and transit package is anything but. (Never mind that we currently are spending 52 percent of every transportation tax dollar in this region on public transit.) A zeal for expanding Sound Transit's light-rail system (Sound Transit 2, or ST2) has doubled the transit "half" of the combined package. The roads-and-transit package will cost $38.1 billion through 2027, with $14.5 billion going toward the Regional Transportation Investment District (roads) and $23.6 billion toward ST2. While the RTID program will be completed and its bonds will be paid off by 2037, ST2 will have debt and large ongoing operations and maintenance costs that will likely require that taxpayers keep paying for ST2 through 2057. If the roads-and-transit package is approved, it means Sound Transit's Sound Move (ST1) sales tax levy will be extended. By 2057, Sound Transit will have collected a whopping $141 billion in extended ST1 plus ST2 local tax revenues. In the combined RTID/ST2 package, only 10 percent of the total revenue is dedicated to roads. In talking about its light-rail expansion, Sound Transit hasn't been accurate or forthcoming about the true costs and projected effect on congestion. I've spent the past two years closely examining ST2 and cutting through Sound Transit's financial fog and rosy talk. Here is what I've discovered: • The real cost to households is extremely high. Sound Transit claims that the per-household costs of the roads-and-transit package will be $150 per year plus $80 per vehicle. This is a lowball estimate that claims only 40 percent of sales-tax revenues are paid by household taxpayers and consumers. The combined ST1, ST2 and RTID taxes will actually be $888 per household in 2008 and then inflate at Sound Transit's estimated 5.2 percent annually thereafter. • ST2 light rail will have minimal impact on our region's traffic congestion. Sound Transit claims that its ST2 light rail will greatly reduce congestion. But the ST2 plan will result in a minuscule 0.5 percent shift of the region's estimated 16.4 million person-trips a day to transit by 2030. • Sound Transit's claim that ST2 transit will serve 40 percent of all peak-period trips is a huge exaggeration. ST means that, by 2030, transit will serve 40 percent of work trips to downtown Seattle, where only 10 percent of the region's jobs are located. It will serve 9 percent of all other Seattle work trips, but only 2 percent of the work trips for the rest of the region, where 70 percent of the region's jobs are located. It's unconscionable and inexcusable to put forth what is essentially a Seattlecentric light-rail plan that will serve only a small portion of the region's work force. • The ST2 light-rail program will run where express buses currently operate. That in itself is mind-boggling. Why would you remove an effective transit mode and replace it with an expensive mode that will hardly reduce congestion? • In its exuberance to maximize light rail, the Sound Transit board eliminated 27 of 33 proposed Regional Express Bus (REx) projects and 11 of 18 Sounder commuter-rail projects that were in the January 2005 ST2 project list draft. The shift from the REx projects in effect eliminated the Bus Rapid Transit program for the heavily used Interstate 405/Highway 167 corridor. If approved, the RTID/ST2 package will hamper the ability of the governor and Legislature to enact any statewide transportation packages for many years. There is a better solution to our region's transportation problems than what ST2 offers. The combination of a freeway high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) network (which is approaching completion) and well-funded and coordinated local bus systems (including Bus Rapid Transit enhancements) can do far more to alleviate our congestion problems than light rail can, at one-tenth the cost. It makes sense to continue expanding the bus-transit system that has placed our region eighth in the nation in share of work trips served by public transit. Voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties should reject the flawed RTID-ST2 proposal and demand that our region's transportation leaders immediately craft a more-sensible, cost-efficient package that will accomplish our top transportation priority — reducing highway congestion. Jim MacIsaac is a professional transportation engineer who has spent 45 years in the planning of the Puget Sound region's transportation systems. seattletimes.nwsource.com

To: Road Walker who wrote (350230)	9/11/2007 4:47:28 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1585849

Sort of like Iraq before we invaded? Iraq was haven to all sorts of terrorists prior to the invasion....Abu Nidal & Abu Abbas to name a couple. Then there was Salman Pak (training facility). Sponsorship of homicide bomber families.....all part of pre-invasion Iraq. J.