carapace – Not your father's america

TV ads on DeLay to run in three GOP districts

Public Campaign Action Fund

Dear Friend,

We just announced a multiple-congressional district television ad buy to put Republican politicians on the hot-seat for defending Tom DeLay’s corruption.

But, within hours, it was reported that radical right groups are circling the wagons around Tom DeLay and trying to shore up support among Congressional Republicans with grassroots campaigns in similar districts as the ones we’re targeting.

This is a battle for public opinion and we need your help to win it.

Help us run hard-hitting TV ads demanding that three targeted members of Congress — Reps. Rob Simmons (CT), Tom Reynolds (NY), and Doc Hastings (WA) — join our call for DeLay to resign. You support will also help us match DeLay’s allies by expanding our ads to other districts around the country.

Please make a donation for $50, $100, or more, today.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

Let me tell you what I think is at stake. We know DeLay has to go. He’s a walking scandal, an embarrassment to our democratic ideals, and he has dragged Congress into private matters to divert attention away from the ethics scandals swirling around him.

But, as a colleague of mine said in the New York Times today, a fish rots from the head, and DeLay is certainly the symbol of all the money-rot in Congress. If he is allowed by Republicans to stay, it gives all the big money politicians and their lobbyist friends freedom to buy and sell policy at will. That’s why we have to win this fight. The stakes are too high.

Donate to help run these ads, and spread them to other districts.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

It’s a fight we can win. Cracks have already appeared in DeLay’s conservative foundation. The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Monday against him. Last week the conservative San Diego Union-Tribune called for him to step down. Since launching this campaign, 20,000 Americans have signed our petition, and tens of thousands more have taken action through other organizations.

Reps. Simmons, Hastings, and Reynolds need to hear from us. Make a donation and help run these ads. With your help, we’ll strike a blow to the corrosive pay-to-play system worshipped by Tom DeLay.

https://secure.ga3.org/03/without_delay

Thanks,

David Donnelly
Public Campaign Action Fund

P.S. If you’d prefer to send a check in the mail, send it to Public Campaign Action Fund, 1320 19th Street, NW, Suite M-1, Washington, DC 20036. Contributions to Public Campaign Action Fund are not tax-deductible.

LIBERAL GROUPS TO LAUNCH ADS AGAINST DELAY

Two liberal organizations are beginning an ad campaign this week designed, they say, to pressure House Majority Leader Tom DeLay into leaving Congress. The 30-second television spots highlight DeLay’s recent ethical troubles in the House, as well as his ties to a political action committee in Texas that is under criminal investigation there. The ads also spotlight a recent revelation that DeLay, R-Texas, traveled unknowingly at the expense of a foreign agent five years ago. Leaders of Public Campaign
Action Fund and the labor-backed Campaign for America’s Future said they spent $75,000 on the ads, which are to begin airing Thursday in the districts of DeLay and Reps. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., Rob Simmons, R-Conn., and Thomas M. Reynolds, R-N.Y. DeLay, who was attending an airport groundbreaking event in his district, heard about the new ad campaign from reporters. “Bring it on,” he told them.

From: CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE

SAHAR SABA, saharsaba@yahoo.com, http://www.rawa.org

A member of the foreign affairs committee of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, Saba is in Pakistan working with Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan. She said today: “It’s very sad that there is little discussion of Afghanistan except with events like this visit by Laura Bush. The last three years after the collapse of the Taliban have seen little change for most women in Afghanistan, especially outside of Kabul. [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai promised during the presidential election to get rid of the warlords, but they are in the cabinet. We are seeing rapes of girls, forced marriages, kidnappings and a dramatic increase in suicides among young women who see no way out. … We continue to have very poor medical facilities, little electricity. Thousands of children died during the cold of the last winter.”

SONALI KOLHATKAR, sonali@afghanwomensmission.org, http://www.afghanwomensmission.org

Kolhatkar, based in Los Angeles, is co-director of the Afghan Women’s Mission and has recently returned from a trip to Afghanistan. She said today: “Mrs. Bush said yesterday that ‘American women stand in solidarity with the women of Afghanistan.’ But most Afghan women disapprove of U.S. policy. Women are overwhelmingly disappointed with the re-emergence of warlords, a direct result of U.S. policy. These warlords are ideologically similar to the Taliban and many have horrific war crimes in their past. Unfortunately the Bush administration and Mrs. Bush refuse to apply the same standards of women’s rights to their warlord allies.”

Kolhatkar added: “Laura Bush is taking $21.2 million in school grants to Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s education was recently called the ‘worst education system in the world’ by the UN, and unfortunately Mrs. Bush’s donation will barely make a dent in the needs — the United Nations, the Asia Development Bank and the World Bank estimate the need in Afghanistan to be at about $15 billion over a period of 10 years. Afghan Finance Minister Hedayat Arsala predicts the needs to be around $22 billion for the first five years. Mrs. Bush’s small donation (hugely outweighed by the U.S. military budget for Afghanistan) is clearly aimed at promoting a perception of U.S. generosity, rather than achieving real progress for Afghanistan. If Mrs. Bush was really interested in Afghan women’s rights, she should back an immediate disarmament of warlords, disbarment from government positions, and a war crimes tribunal to demand justice for past crimes. The warlords hinder Afghan women’s development, democratic freedoms and access to education.”

The Associated Press reports that Laura Bush’s trip “was timed to coincide with a meeting in Kabul of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council.” Writing about the group in a recent paper, “Afghan Women Continue to Fend for Themselves,” Kolhatkar commented: “Consistent with the Bush administration’s main interest in stimulating [a] ‘private sector economy’ in Afghanistan, the UAWC’s core mission is to ‘develop and foster partnerships between the private and public sectors,’ according to a U.S. State Department press release. So committed is the U.S. to Afghan women that the Council has no formal budget…”

[See:
http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004afghanwom.html ]

LAURA FLANDERS, Lflanders@aol.com, http://www.lauraflanders.com

Flanders is author of the book “Bushwomen: How They Won the White House for Their Man,” just out in paperback, which includes profiles of Laura Bush and Karen Hughes. Flanders said today: “The First Lady celebrates the ouster of the Taliban while she and her husband collaborate with misogynist theocrats in the USA. In Kabul, the U.S.-installed Karzai government works hand-in-glove with warlords who trail a long record of rape and human rights abuse. Laura Bush’s trip, presumably choreographed by Karen Hughes, is intended to put a female-friendly face on an unpopular pro-corporate agenda being promoted by private U.S. companies. Hughes has said she wishes she could have done PR for Exxon after the Valdez spill. U.S. oil companies, Afghan warlords — and heroin dealers — have seen more gains from the U.S. role than the mass of Afghan women ever will.”

CARMELA BARANOWSKA, cbaranowska@yahoo.com.au, http://www.talibancountry.com

Currently in New York City, Baranowska is the award-winning filmmaker of “Taliban Country,” made in the most remote and dangerous parts of Afghanistan last year. It shows U.S. Marines hunting Taliban and Al
Qaeda. Extended portions of the documentary are available at the above web page. Baranowska said today: “We uncovered U.S. abuse of Afghans as well as collusion with local war/drug lords. The footage is a unique and unprecedented ‘window’ onto an extremely traditional way of life which is being totally destroyed by U.S. military operations, detention, abuse and torture. The U.S., in effect, is making more Taliban.

“The film has led to two U.S. military inquiries and the ‘firing’ of the U.S. Marines’ battalion commander, a rising Pakistani-American called Lt. Col. Asad Khan. … Who knows what really went on? Was Khan a scapegoat? Where did the chain of command end? None of the military documents have been released publicly. In the bigger picture, the U.S. military was supposed to have released its own internal military report back in June 2004. However, their constant delay has meant that the abuses
are continuing.”

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050326/NEWS/503260408/1060

Florida freelance television reporter Mike Vasilinda’s public relations firm “has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush’s office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda’s stories,” while those stories aired on CNN and Florida NBC affiliates. Mike Vasilinda Productions has also worked on political campaigns. Vasilinda rejected comparisons to Armstrong Williams, “because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced.” Journalism professor Bob Steele said the arrangement “certainly raises some red flags.”

SOURCE: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 26, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/3522

By ROBERT PEAR, March 31, 2005

WASHINGTON, March 30 – A federal district judge on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that would have allowed employers to reduce or eliminate health benefits for retirees when they reach age
65 and become eligible for Medicare.

Ten million retirees could have had benefits cut under the rule, which was adopted last April by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The judge, Anita B. Brody of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia, struck down the rule and issued a permanent injunction that prohibits federal officials from enforcing it.

The rule “is contrary to Congressional intent and the plain language of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act,” the 1967 law that bans most forms of age discrimination in the workplace, Judge Brody wrote.

The erosion of retiree health benefits is an explosive political issue. Before issuing the rule, the commission was deluged with letters opposing it.

The rule would have created an explicit exemption to the age discrimination law, allowing employers to reduce health benefits for retirees when they became eligible for Medicare. Under the rule,
Judge Brody said, employers could have given older retirees “health benefits that are inferior” to those given retirees younger than 65.

The commission argued that employers were more likely to continue providing health benefits to retirees under 65 if they were allowed to reduce or eliminate benefits for those 65 and older.

AARP, the main plaintiff in the case, rejected that argument. It said the rule would accelerate the erosion of retiree health benefits, a trend that has been evident for more than a decade.

Christopher G. Mackaronis, a Washington lawyer for AARP, said Wednesday: “The rule was an example of executive arrogance. Federal agencies have no authority to rewrite laws passed by Congress. The
rule was adopted in April 2004, but officials tucked it in their back pocket while they courted older voters last year. After the election, they moved forward with the regulation.”

The rule, written by the commission, was reviewed and cleared by other agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services.

Cari M. Dominguez, the chairwoman of the commission, said her agency would ask the Justice Department to appeal the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia.

The appeals court ruled on the same legal issue five years ago, in a case involving retirees who had worked for Erie County, Pa. Judge Brody closely followed the precedent laid down by the appeals court.

The commission’s rule would allow employers to engage in “the exact same behavior” prohibited in the Erie County case, Judge Brody said. In that case, the appeals court found that Congress had intended the age discrimination law to apply “when an employer reduces health benefits based on Medicare eligibility.”

In the district court, the commission argued that it had the power to exempt certain conduct from the age discrimination law as long as the exemption was reasonable, “necessary and proper in the public
interest.”

Judge Brody rejected that contention. The commission, she said, was trying to “issue a blanket exemption for illegal behavior,” not confined to a few individual cases. “An administrative agency,
including the E.E.O.C., may not issue regulations, rules or exemptions that go against the intent of Congress,” she added.

The law clearly forbids employers to discriminate on the basis of age in setting pay and employee benefits, Judge Brody said. And the law, as interpreted by the appeals court, “prohibits the practice of coordinating retiree benefits with Medicare eligibility,” she said.

No law requires employers to provide health benefits to workers or retirees. Employers can legally provide benefits to active workers and not to retirees. Many employers have eliminated retiree health
benefits. But, Judge Brody said, if an employer provides benefits to retirees, it cannot discriminate among them on the basis of age.

Lawyers said the ruling would apply to companies that give health benefits to early retirees and want to reduce coverage when the retirees reach 65 and become eligible for Medicare. Employer-
provided health benefits do not duplicate Medicare. Rather, they help retirees pay medical expenses not covered by Medicare. Those expenses could include co-payments and deductibles and prescription
drug costs, beyond what Medicare might pay.

Michele Pollak, a lawyer at AARP, said, “It is less expensive for employers to purchase a health plan that supplements Medicare than it is to purchase health benefits for younger retirees not eligible
for Medicare.”

The American Benefits Council, a trade group for large employers, and the HR Policy Association, which represents human resource executives at 250 large companies, said they were disappointed with
Judge Brody’s decision.

Daniel V. Yager, senior vice president of the association, said the ruling was “a major setback for many employers that are trying to maintain employer-provided benefits for pre-65 retirees.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/politics/31retire.html?th&emc=th