Blogged by Brad from Boulder, CO…
Must get off the grid today very shortly (and will be gone until after Labor Day), so not much time for comment here. Rather, I’ll give you quick pointers to three superb editorials in today’s papers as the voices of the good guys return to counter the charlatans and propagandists who’ve been dominating the media pages for far too long.
Please read on, for some heroic cries for accountability — finally — from the hopelessly compromised U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Election Officials in general, and Sequoia Voting Systems in particular, all found in the op/ed pages today from Coast-to-Coast!…
Our hero, Tova Andrea Wang, she the co-author of the bipartisan “Voter Fraud” report commissioned, then buried, and then released in altered, bastardized form by the EAC, speaks out today in the Washington Post. With her gag order now lifted, Wang details how the EAC has become little more than a politically compromised branch of the Bush Administration. No different from any of the other agencies that have been politicizing and rewriting public reports before they ever reach the public.
(NOTE: we interviewed her several weeks ago while Guest Hosting the Peter B. Collins Show, just days after she was finally allowed to speak about all of this for the first time, audio & text transcript here)
The EAC, as created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) after the FL 2000 Election Debacle, was supposed to serve as a bi-partisan oversight group to monitor and assist in the administration of the nation’s federal elections. But they have become fully partisan, politicized, compromised, and ineffectual in their prescribed duties. Just one example from the editorial detailing how her bi-partisan report was bastardized by the EAC:
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[I]t is evident from the commission’s “document dump” that its Republican general counsel assumed primary control over the rewriting of the report.
Also of note in the op/ed pages today, Ron Watt from Tehama County, CA, calls the Election Registrars out in the Red Bluff Daily News for the horrific way in which they’ve been operating, in near-lockstep, as agents for the Voting Machine Companies instead of the voters of California. Though his editorial refers to Election Officials in the Golden State, it could equally well describe the vast majority of such officials across the entire country. One sample…
These registrars, and in some case their predecessors, are responsible for convincing the various county entities to purchase these voting systems in the first place. I have spoken to, spoken before and listened to the rhetoric that is spewed by registrar of voters throughout California and various other states. The statements that they make are near verbatim. It would lead one to believe that Genetic Engineering has been continuing to the point that they are actually cloning these beings.
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[T]he very basic bottom line is that the Registrar of Voters is sworn to a solemn oath to uphold the rights of the citizenry and conduct fair and uncompromised elections. This has not been the case. The multi million dollar expenditure of taxpayer funds on flawed systems and then worse yet the continuing defense and justification of these systems is truly a violation of that oath.
As I remarked earlier with regards to cloning, you will note the identical pattern, “Buy the machines,” “The machines are good,” “The machines have not failed,” “The naysayers are just sour grapes wackos,” “Oh woe is me. It will cost money for paper ballots,” “It’s not my fault.”
Finally, the editorial board at the Desert Sun, in a refreshing change of pace, calls for accountability for the mess in Riverside County, CA, where the Board of Supervisors may finally be catching on to the deception that has been played on them by Sequoia Voting Systems and their Registrars of Voters (first Mischelle Townsend, now Barbara Dunmore) for so many years. The unbylined editorial describes the scene at a recent County Board of Supervisors meeting in which the discussion concerned getting money back from Sequoia for their misrepresented systems, and the county’s current attempt to lease paper-based systems for the upcoming elections, rather than be burned again (they’ve so far paid $30 million to Sequoia for systems that don’t work, and can no longer be used):
County supervisors must keep pushing Sequoia.
Meanwhile, this entire situation has spun out of control, and someone should be held accountable.
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This situation is screaming for careful scrutiny and review. Someone must be held accountable for the ongoing million-dollar snafus.
UPDATE: Oh, and one more. The St. Petersburg Times finally wakes up and realizes how dirty Tom Feeney is. Noticing at least part of what we reported two days ago, the Times rightfully calls one of the U.S. Congress’s most corrupt Congressmen “shameless”…
Toward that quest to demonstrate his integrity, Feeney has now taken a $5,000 contribution from a company owned by his longtime political benefactor, Tyng-Lin Yang. Yang, as the Sentinel reports, is also president of Yang Enterprises, which is seeking a “logistics operations” contract at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Feeney is the senior Republican on the House Science space subcommittee. Feel cozy?
Yang and Feeney are no strangers. Feeney once worked as a lobbyist for Yang Enterprises and was accused, while he served as Florida House speaker, of using his position to intervene in a contract dispute with the state. Over the past six years, Yang and his wife have donated $18,000 to Feeney’s campaigns.
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If his reason for silence is to further stoke the public’s growing distrust, he is right on schedule.
Thank you BRAD!
Have a good vacado.
GBD
Thanks Brad, have a nice Labor day, where ever you go!
Since “the EAC has become little more than a politically compromised branch of the Bush Administration“, that makes it the evil twin of the Department of
JusticeJust Us doesn’t it?But the fact these entities have become corrupted by bushie thinking is not the end of the matter. A call to abolish the entities is not the cure.
Cleaning them up and making them American in nature is.
For instance, this is happening:
(Wash. Post, emphasis mine). All this heat was started by Democratic committees in the House and the Senate. And those investigations are ongoing, parallel to the DoJ investigation.
This is the way to do it. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lets have intensive investigation of the EAC too, and lets clean them both up completely!
August 31, 2007
Dear Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Chairman Henry Waxman and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Senators Murray and Cantwell, and Congressman Reichert
I have included below information about the activities on Marion Blakely. This is outrageous. I have included information about Marion Blakely below. Marion Blakely should be investigated and prosecuted.
The corruption exposed by Gerald Eastman and others which Ms. Blakely appears to be connected with needs to be finally examined properly and some real action taken.
The Federal Whistleblower legislation S.274 must be passed now. The House and the Senate must see that other Whistleblower reports and complaints must be supported and fully investigated and wrongdoers prosecuted as necessary.
This kind of corruption must stop.
Sincerely,
The Revolving Door Revolves…
WASHINGTON, D.C. –
Found on http://moderateman.blogspot.com/2007/08/revolving-door-revolves.html
The Federal Aviation Administration’s top official is headed for the door–Washington’s revolving door, that is–to become the aerospace industry’s head lobbyist.
The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has announced that FAA Administrator Marion Blakey will become its new chief executive Nov. 12, replacing the organization’s retiring CEO, John Douglass. In her new role, Blakey will be the top voice in Washington for an industry that makes commercial planes and serves as a contractor to the Pentagon. Its most prominent members include Boeing (nyse: BA – news – people ), Northrop Grumman (nyse: NOC – news – people ) and Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT – news – people ).
A conflict of interest? Possibly. Even though this type of thing happens all the time in Washington, it’s certainly a gray area. And it doesn’t do much to change the public’s belief that politicians and political appointees are in bed with industry.
“Essentially what these members are doing is cashing in on their public service,” says Craig Holman, who follows congressional issues for the watchdog group Public Citizen. He notes that political appointees are doing the same thing. “It’s because there’s just so much money at stake now,” he adds.
(Forbes)
To read more information on FAA/Boeing/DOT Wrongdoing and Corruption, visit: http://www.thelastinspector.com, and http://whistleblowersupporter.typepad.com or http://360.yahoo.com/flyover_27
Thank you for taking the time to do that flyover27. I have become so tired of feeling like I have to educate and guide my reps. in voting for US. Since my senators are Snowe and Collins…I have about given up on them. But my rep(D) Tom Allen is running against Collins in ’08…so he is at least trying to look like he represents US.
FInnally the CA SoS has decertified Sequoia and Diebold
black box voting systems,and rightfully so…I have no
soft heart for those CA county comminissioners who got
duped by thier local registrar of voters,and got burned
into funding(hard earned taxpayer $)voting machines that are now completely useless.It is high time the voters of thier county commissoners and voter registrar
elect new members(on the platform of election reform and honesty)before it’s too late.