Free E-Z Passes Aren't Free For The Rest Of Us

The MTA has given out approximately 24,000 free E-Z passes, most of which have gone to city agencies. Unfortunately for straphangers and those that drive our bridges and tunnels and pay the fare, we are left with the cost. The MTA is yet again looking at another fare increase in two years, but perhaps there is a better way of getting the money, at least some of it.

From The NY Daily News:

The MTA is planning fare and toll hikes in 2010, but they could be put on the table for next year because of budget gaps. Given the MTA's shortfall, fare hikes could come around next year - and Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said the city should pony up some dough.

"The City of New York should reimburse the agency's cost, as it now does in part for discounted fares for city students and senior citizens," Russianoff said.[...]

For decades, the MTA has granted free passage to government agencies that "provide services directly to us ... to save public money by avoiding the need for these agencies to budget public funds for tolls," the MTA's bridge and tunnel division said.

This really is a question of fiscal management, because the MTA is not saving the public money by giving the city those passes free of charge. The money is merely coming from the public in other ways. The MTA is funded by the state's tax base and by those that ride the trains everyday. The thing of the matter is, if the city is using the E-Z Passes, they should pay for them.

John McCain Hearts AirBus Lobbyists

Mr. American war hero may have flown an American-made plane in Vietnam (or more than just one) but as a Senator, he preferred to go with European-made AirBus jets. I wonder why that is? Maybe this 30 second spot can help me with that question.



Check out more info at Fire The Lobbyists.

Even Golf Can Be Corrupted By George Bush

Golf, like it or not, is one of America's pastime sports. Of course it came from Scotland, but so did baseball in a way. It has been played by many great Americans and tarnished by scandal as baseball has by the Black Sox controversy almost 90 years ago. It has also been played by a lot of blue blood bastards and George Bush and his dad H.W. are two to be counted among them. Thanks to the Bush family and their friends in the Department of Justice, another scandal has been added to the game.

From ABC News:

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the World Golf Foundation's First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by the trade journal Youth Today.

"I don't know why people insist on denigrating it, it's a sound program," Flores told ABC News.

Current and former Justice Department employees allege that Flores ignored the staff rankings in favor of programs that had political, social or religious connections to the Bush White House.

The honorary chairman of the First Tee program is former President George Bush. On a videotape presentation, the former President Bush praised the program for "serving others and building character and building values."

Golf may be a great game, but mixing politics into how youth programs get Federal dollars is called cronyism. Of course, that has been the mantra of the Bush Administration since they started wasting taxpayer dollars in January of 2001. In fact, nothing about George Bush has been about merit since the day he came out with the silver gold platinum spoon in his mouth as a babe.

30th Council District Still Considered Undecided

It has been a week since election day in the 30th council district in Queens but there still is no declared winner. Despite a non-partisan affair, the Republican favored Anthony Como originally bested Democratic machine candidate Elizabeth Crowley. Both candidates had roughly 30 percent of the vote but there are still ballots to be had and on top of that, suspicions of voter fraud may be investigated by the Department of Justice.

From Queens Crap:

Just when you thought things couldn't get more corrupt in Queens County comes word from a source inside the Board of Elections that the US Department of Justice received a complaint regarding allegations of voter fraud during the CD30 special election. Questions have reportedly arisen as to the following:

- Postcards were not mailed to voters in the district of the election as per protocol. A vote was taken by BOE to not to inform the public via mail, allegedly in order to decrease turnout of the majority party. (Dems outnumber Reps in the district 2 to 1 - see chart)
- A total of 4,383 district voters pulled the lever for a Republican, when you add Ognibene and Como's numbers together

- Vote counts are overinflated and do not reflect actual turnout witnessed and documented by poll workers.
- Crowley won Glendale, Ognibene won Middle Village but Como won Maspeth, where he is even less known than he is in the rest of the district.
- PS113 in Glendale strangely reported triple the turnout of the other 28 polling sites.
- Allegations of individual voters casting ballots at multiple polling sites or casting multiple ballots at the same site at different times throughout the day. (This occurred as campaign volunteers mysteriously vanished from their posts during the afternoon hours.)
- The shipping of state workers down from Albany to work the election.
- Paid state employees campaigning for a candidate during working hours.
- Unusually large numbers of absentee ballots being received by BOE.

Hmm, the Council District is wrapped by State Senate District 15 and held by Republican Serphin Maltese. Perhaps that whole Albany to NYC thing had something to do with hi....nah, a State Senator wouldn't have anything to do with that, knowing how clean Albany is and especially the Senate with Joe Bruno running it. And our state's reputation for ethics and accountability is top notch.

We'll have to wait and see what the Department of Justice comes up with, you know, that Department of Justice. Of course, since this has nothing to do with George Bush, they might actually be allowed to do their jobs.

Lunch With Barack

John McCain is charging $28,500 for rich Republican Manhattanites to show up for lunch tomorrow. Barack Obama had these five men and women over lunch in April...and all it cost them was to send an email asking to come:

Protest John McCain In NYC Tomorrow!

John McCain is coming to town tomorrow to do the only thing Republicans are good at here, raising money. While individuals can only give him $2,300 for the general election, those in attendance at the 21 Club are chocking up $28,500 for lunch with the Republican nominee. Now the first thing I have to ask is what kind of people are willing to give a failure like McCain all that money (not to him directly of course)? Well the host of the event is none other than Mr. Henry Kravis, one of the nation's most despicable buyout barons America has ever seen. Democratic groups in New York aren't taking this lying down and are protesting the event to show just how much we mean business.

From Yahoo News:

To: STATE EDITORS

Contact: Evan Thies of Service Employees International Union, +1-917 715 9265

Controversial buyout baron Henry Kravis to host event

NEW YORK, June 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Advocates for a fairer, better economy, workers, and political improv troupe Billionaires for Bush will gather in front of the posh 21 Club in Manhattan on Tuesday to protest John McCains support for tax loopholes for some of the wealthiest buyout executives in the country. The $28,500 a ticket luncheon is being organized by some of the most controversial names in business, including buyout baron Henry Kravis.

John McCain has said he does not support closing tax loopholes for hedge fund managers and buyout industry executives such as Kravis, who have pocketed billions of dollars by paying a lesser percentage of their income to taxes than many regular working Americans. Besides helping to organize Tuesdays event, Kravis has been a major fund-raiser for John McCain throughout his campaign for president.

McCains tax plan also includes two huge tax cut giveaways for American corporationslowering rates from 35% to 25% and adding other new deductions. KKR companies stand to make millions of dollars off the new cuts. According to the Center for American Progress, The centerpiece of Sen. John McCains (R-AZ) tax plan is two huge tax cuts for American corporations, including utility and energy companies. A CAP analysis finds that McCains tax policywhich lowers corporate tax rates from 35 to 25 % and makes equipment and technology investments immediately deductiblewould give a single KKR portfolio company, Energy Future Holdings (formerly TXU), a $49 million tax cut.

The countrys fastest-growing union - the Service Employees International Union - recently launched a multi-tier global campaign directed at world leaders and legislators, pressing for fairer taxation of the multi-trillion-dollar private equity industry, with an eye toward shaping the debate during the U.S. presidential race.

WHAT:

Dozens of protesters fighting for a fair economy; performances by the Billionaires for Bush.

WHEN/WHERE:

June 10 - 6:30 PM

The 21 Club -- 21 West 52nd St.

New York City, NY

SOURCE Service Employees International Union

If I didn't have a prior commitment tomorrow night, I'd be there, even if it is a 100 degrees outside. I hope plenty of people show up so that McCain can hear the citizens of New York protest him, his candidacy and Henry Kravis as well.

Watchout Right-Wingers, McCain's Website Is Filthy

You gotta love the rabid right wingers for trying to play a game they ultimately will not win. The "influential" right-wing blog tried to claim that Obama holds extreme views by taking screen shots of some comments on his website. Well the problem is for them that for every one of our bad apples, there are throngs on the right that just love to hate.

From AmericaBlog:

UPDATE: Jed finds more on other McCain sites, including a reference to Obama as a n*gger.

Some folks on the right thought they'd pull an "I gotcha" on Obama by trying to find kooky things visitors have written on Obama's blog. So, I thought I'd take a look at John McCain's campaign Web site and do a search for words like "fag," "bitch," and "Jew," for starters. What I found wasn't pretty. It's interesting to note that each comment has a "flag as offensive" button next to it, so that readers can inform the moderator that the comments are offensive. Either McCain's readers don't find any of this offensive, or McCain's staff was informed and didn't care.
[...]

Obama is the anti-Christ (there's a long debate on this page of McCain's site as to whether Obama really is the anti-Christ): Obama is the devil and the anti-Christ: Hillary as "bitch." This one is particularly odd as it seems to be something posted by McCain's own staff - they quoted an article calling Hillary a "bitch": Obama is a "Muslim fag": "I wipe my ass with the Muslim book of hate, the Quran":

And there is plenty more on AmericaBlog as well as the JedReport. As many are saying, idiotic comments made by supporters do not necessarily mean that the candidate feels the same way. Of course, despite all of the hate McCain supporters have for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, nothing is more offensive than McCain's policies that will continue the horrendous reign of George Bush.

Bush Didn't Know $4 Gas Was Coming

I know, I know, a real shocker, right?

Pentagon Tells Interrogators To Shred Evidence

While President Bush and his minions have constantly told us that the United States does not torture, many of us know better. The international community certainly knows better. The Bush Administration should know better, but chooses to torture those they capture anyway. Now we have news that the Pentagon told its interrogators to destroy evidence of what exactly they did with their prisoners.

From The Huffington Post:

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial.

Kuebler said the apparent destruction of evidence prevents him from challenging the reliability of any alleged confessions. He said he will use the document to seek a dismissal of charges against Khadr.

Now I am all for prosecuting those that do harm against our soldiers and our country, but torturing them or those that are alleged to have done harm is highly unnecessary. It has already been proven over and over again that it doesn't work. Not only is it ineffective, but the practice goes against human decency and was outlawed by the Geneva Conventions (something Bush has no regard for). If there was evidence covered up, it shows that the Pentagon is fully aware of their actions and the consequences if definitive proof surfaced about their policy on torture.

The Problem Wasn't The Money, It Was Mark Penn

Mark Penn decided to grace the Op-Ed page of the New York Times yesterday to offer his own 'inciteful' analysis of what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign. He was the senior adviser for the crucial portion of the campaign, so he should know best looking backwards, right?

From Mark Penn in the NYT:

Perhaps the most frustrating part of losing a close race is thinking about what else you could have done to win. You replay the campaign over and over again in your head. As an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, I sure do.

But the endless armchair chatter often obscures what actually needed to be done.[...]

Are there a lot of other things the campaign could have done differently? Of course. We should have taken on Mr. Obama more directly and much earlier, and we needed a different kind of operation to win caucuses and to retain the support of superdelegates. From more aggressively courting young people earlier to mobilizing the full power of women, there are things that could have been done differently.

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

In between those two sets of paragraphs Penn "breaks down the myths" that critics have charged Senator Clinton with. He says that Clinton had more than just a message of experience. Thats right, but it was her main message and everything else she said was all over the place and therefore her message remained inconsistent. Though for the most part, once she fell behind in the pledged delegate count in February, her message was one that attacked Obama and remained mainly negative of him and the press that supposedly cushioned him and offered him pillows. The reality of how the press treated both candidates was actually far different.

Penn also mentions that she was both a warrior and warm by campaigning with her mother and daughter. If Penn thinks anyone is going to buy that line, he clearly doesn't understand the nature of the American electorate. That, and the fact that he did not map out a full primary campaign past February was the real problem. It wasn't about not having enough money as Penn claims, it was that there was no real grassroots movement behind Clinton. Sure, 18 million people voted for her but Obama was running a strategy that involved all 50 states, not just the most populous. His message reached out to all 50 states and his organization was unmatched. If Penn had taken all of this into consideration, then maybe things would have turned out differently.

Sen. Graham Makes The Case For Bush's 3rd Term

John McCain tried to distance himself from being labeled as "Bush's third term" in his speech last week, but apparently his buddy Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina didn't get the message that real policy goals of the Republican nominee are supposed to be kept hush-hush until after November:

Indicted Saudi Crook Given $80 Mil Contract By Pentagon

Since George Bush doesn't care about the rule of law when it comes to his actions as President, why would it matter for anyone else? For Saudi financier and indicted crook Gaith Pharaon, it helps to have friends at high places in the Bush Administration. Gaith was implicated in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International collapse and is wanted by the Department of Justice. They never got him because he fled the country but apparently for Bush, he can still help himself to our taxpayer dollars to the tune of $80,000,000.

From Newshoggers:

The Bush administration looks out for it's friends even when they support the terrorists. (Hat Tip to John Cole)

Indicted Saudi Gets $80 Million US Contract

The US military has awarded an $80 million contract to a prominent Saudi financier who has been indicted by the US Justice Department. The contract to supply jet fuel to American bases in Afghanistan was awarded to the Attock Refinery Ltd, a Pakistani-based refinery owned by Gaith Pharaon. Pharaon is wanted in connection with his alleged role at the failed Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the CenTrust savings and loan scandal, which cost US tax payers $1.7 billion.

The Saudi businessman was also named in a 2002 French parliamentary report as having links to informal money transfer networks called hawala, known to be used by traders and terrorists, including Al Qaeda.

Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush's first business venture, Arbusto Energy.

See, a little help from way back in George's Texas days goes a long way! Who cares if he helps funnel money to Al Qaeda or caused the U.S. economy to blow $1.7 billion in the BCCI scandal? As long as you are one of Bush's friends, nothing else matters.