grannyinsanity - on the edge in montana: 03/05/2006

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Generational Welfare

Has anybody ever sat down and figured out what the Bush Family extracurricular activities (government programs) have cost the American taxpayers over the last sixty-five years or so?

And exactly what did Rep Jim Welker (R-Colorado) mean to imply anyway?

Rep. Welker cites his 'poor judgment' in forwarding essay

By Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News
March 10, 2006

A Loveland lawmaker has been blasted by his colleagues for e-mailing an essay written by someone else that accused "welfare-pampered blacks" of waiting for the government to save them from Hurricane Katrina.

Rep. Jim Welker, a Republican, said Thursday morning that he forwarded the article because of its message about society victimizing people by making them dependent on government programs.

He said he didn't agree with everything in the essay.

One passage says, "President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks."

House lawmakers - black and white, Republican and Democrat - expressed outrage that Welker would forward such an essay.

Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, who worked with Katrina evacuees when they came to Colorado, said she was "appalled and sickened."

"These (were) poor people. Many of them were senior citizens and had no way to escape the hurricane," said Stafford, who is white.

Rep. Terrence Carroll, D-Denver, called it "one one of the most irresponsible e-mails someone in this chamber has sent out."

"It shows (Welker's) complete and utter disregard, at worst, and the misunderstanding, at best, of the lives of people of color," said Carroll, who is black.

After the uproar, Welker issued the following statement late in the afternoon:

"Forwarding this e-mail, particularly without comment, showed poor judgment on my part. I found the opinions expressed by this individual, especially if taken literally, to be offensive and inappropriate. I should not have assumed that this would be clear when received by others."

He earlier said he should have put a disclaimer on the e-mail, and will do so in future e-mails of other writers' material.

Welker said he forwarded the e-mail over the weekend on his own computer.

But Democratic lawmakers have asked the legislature's technical staff to determine why copies of the e-mails forwarded to them by people who were upset with the content bear a time stamp of Monday afternoon, when Welker was in a committee hearing with his laptop computer.

Welker, who is white, said he wasn't implying anything about blacks by forwarding the essay.

"Some of my best friends are of different skin color, like Ed Jones," said Welker, referring to Sen. Jones, a Colorado Springs Republican who is black.

Jones said that he and Welker are friends, but not best friends.

Jones said it was wrong for the author to accuse New Orleans blacks of being immoral, but he agreed with Peterson that there is a problem in New Orleans with generational welfare.

Essay author Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, who is black, is praised on one Web site for taking on the NAACP, a "tool of the largely 'elite, socialist' Democratic Party."

Carroll said Peterson has "made his whole career shilling for the hard right."

Welker last year took heat from his own caucus for saying he feared that if gays were allowed to marry, then people might eventually marry their animals. Republicans said they were embarrassed by his comments.

On blacks, Katrina

Excerpts from an essay by the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson posted Sept. 21, 2005, on WorldNetDaily.com:

• "Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. What would you do?

If you're black . . . you'll probably wait for the government to save you."

• "When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out."

• "About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. (But) I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder."

• "Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves."

• "Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so."

• The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is a conservative black evangelical minister from Los Angeles and host of a nationally syndicated radio show.

bartels@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5327

.

Fair Use is the last best chance to keep this one out of the creeping black hole of information that would be public if it didn't keep disappearing.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Agribusiness's Stealth Takeover

... Despite the far-reaching implications of the bill, it was brought to the House floor without a committee hearing, which would have allowed lawmakers to hear testimony from proponents and opponents of the bill from industry, government and advocacy groups.*

Don't be lulled into thinking this was a sudden desire to cut down on regulations and paperwork as Congress has another law in the pipeline that smells like an industrial hogfarm. Congress will surely try to sneak the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) although some small producers refer to it as NAzIS, through as quietly as they shoved the lood labeling down our gullets.

Here’s the scenario: People in Sheboygan get sick from something they ate. It’s determined the meat came from a local fast food joint. That fast food joint gets its meat from ABC cow factory. ABC cow factory buys cows from XYZ feedlots. Those feedlots had cows numbered 1q10 through 1q500 in their possession and those cows came from 15 small farms in suburban Tempe. Goodbye 15 small farms in suburban Tempe. Hello scapegoat for fast food joint, slaughterhouse, and feedlots. To protect themselves these large corporations will effectively to put small farmers out of business. Not only the program costs (which fall on the farmer), but also the threat of fines and jail time for not complying will drive small farmers off the land. At the same time, NAIS sets up the same corporations as the only entities granted the ‘privilege’ to raise animals, since they, of course are the only ones who can be trusted to follow such a plan to protect the “national herd.” EXEMPTIONS? But I’ve just got a few chickens and a horse. Not me, right? Wrong. The NAIS plans provide no exemptions whatever. One chicken, one horse, one cow, one sheep, one goat, one bison, one llama, one alpaca, one turkey, one duck -- all must register, premises & animals. GOODBYE PROPERTY RIGHTS The NAIS abolishes private property rights in farms and in animals. The NAIS, run by a branch of the USDA, considers “your” animals to be not yours, but part of “the national herd.”

[em]

Complaints and protests against it will likely be illegal so shut up or else.

Blog roundup on NAIS

*from Seeing the Forest

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

The Morale Booster

Who needs an executive to run things when you can have a morale booster?

McClellan said the criticism of Bush for not asking questions during the video ignores the fact that before the videoconference he had been on the phone with governors in the region and received updates from then-FEMA chief Michael Brown and his own staff. Bush got on the videoconference to boost morale, not collect information, McClellan said, and he left before it ended for a previously scheduled press event at which he made a statement on the hurricane.

"Some have twisted the facts to fit a story line," McClellan said. "He was not there to participate in the full briefing. He was there for that purpose: to lift their spirits."

Scott Mclellan graciously informed the room full of nervous reporters of the President's true mission during his own morale building mission of reassuring them that rumors about shoddy work and poor quality materials on the levy were uncalled for.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan also rejected allegations of inferior rebuilding.

"The Corps of Engineers is using modern design and construction methods, which have greatly improved the last four years, which is the time when those levees were originally built," McClellan said.

Monday, March 06, 2006

A Glance At Fox News

AT&T: BellSouth Deal Would Lead To 10,000 Job Cuts

Housing Slowdown Creeping Through Economy

Gas Prices Soar In Last Week

Stocks Sink On Economy Worrys, Interest Rates

Factory Orders Mark Biggest Drop Since 2000

Treasury Sec'y Urges Congress To Raise Debt Limit

The Cranecam Is Up

Can't get to Kearny, Nebraska to watch the largest gathering of Sandhill Cranes in the world? Me, either.

Thanks to the Audobon Society, you can now watch the action from your living room via the Cranecam. I do recommend waiting for daylight, though.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Next In Line

What will America's government look like a year from now if Diebold and ES&S don't interfere in the 2006 elections? When Bush moves out, these 16 people are standing in line to take his place.