Gabon Oil Money Buys Oval Office Meeting with Bush
A fellow blogger directed me to this little story. I trust you will find it interesting: Omar Bongo of Gabon in west Africa "...is one of the wealthiest heads of state in the world, and this is attributed mainly to oil revenue and corruption. In 2005, an investigation by the United States Senate Indian Affairs Committee into fundraising irregularities by lobbyist Jack Abramoff revealed that Abramoff had offered Bongo to arrange a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in exchange for 9 million dollars. Bongo met Bush 10 months later in the Oval Office."
- Wikipedia
So, which White House officials were possibly collecting the cover charge for this visit? Will the Grand Jury find this answer? Or will we have to wait for Patrick Fitzgerald to snare these crooks on unrelated charges? This culture of corruption is getting curiouser and curiouser.
QuestionItNow
posted by REB 84 at
1/05/2006 11:20:00 PM
9 Comments:
this money thing is at the 'heart of the problem' ...
our citizenship is not really strong in the country ....
in the sense that "we the people" know how to mobilize ourselves in this type of crisis ...
it is a total Constitutional Crisis, and until we grasp that we must convene a "we the people's constitutional convention" ... we wait for someone with "authority" i.e. an elected official or "top cop" to do something ...
i would like the big meeting to happen ...
on the 4th of july .... make this years picnick and fireworks about more than "token citizenship"
noguns sheehan
By
noguns, at 1:39 AM, January 06, 2006
Good thoughts noguns. Will the people take time to get beyond their day to day concerns to look at the bigger picture? Is apathy and frustration holding too many back? Is the whole thing just too confusing and complicated for everyday Americans? We'll find out soon!
By
REB 84, at 9:43 PM, January 06, 2006
it has been done intentionally ... the dumbing down of the citizenry and it has been done through appealing to "greed" and even cultivating it ... so the "money" market has made fortunes creating a 'pop' culture that could care less ... 'citizenship, what's that'
oops ... 'gotta go party' ........
which leads me to my favorite subject ... those of us who dropped out for these reasons, when we were the 'young - uns' ... it came down to 'us' over the years trying to preserve and really 'fighting' for the "right of the people to freely assemble" ... knowing we needed it to stop the war in viet nam, and that we would always need it ... so ... here is the latest in that battle .... a letter by Garrick that i got permission to post on Rep. Conyers, so i thought it should be here also ...
...................................
Here is the letter I sent to Senator Leahy's office concerning Judge
Alito. Senator Leahy is the ranking Senator on the Judiciary Committee
that will meet this month to consider Alito's nomination to The
Supremes.
Garrick Beck
Santa Fe, NM 87505
December 20, 2005
Senator Patrick Leahy
Senate Offices
Washington, D.C. 200xy
Dear Senator Leahy,
I am writing to you to convey information concerning Judge Samuel
Alito’s judicial record, which I sincerely hope will prove valuable in
your committee’s upcoming hearings.
Judge Alito was one of the three appellate jurists who heard my case
concerning rights of First Amendment protected assemblies on public
lands (US v. Beck, 3rd Cir. No. 00-1734). This case resulted in a
diminishment of all Americans’ rights to assemble on National Forest
System land for expressive purposes.
His concurrence in this ruling went contrary to two previous similar
cases in which I was also involved. In both of these previous instances
strikingly similar U.S. Forest Service regulations were overturned as
unconstitutional (US v Israel, Arizona 1986; US v Rainbow Family, Texas
1989).
The regulation which Judge Alito upheld (and which is still on the
books) requires
a) expressive assemblies (of over 74 persons) to go thru hoops and
paperwork which other large groups just assembling for recreation do
not have to follow;
b) any expressive assembly of more than 74 individuals to select and
designate agents or officers to officially represent the individuals
assembling – even tho the individuals may be assembling in part to
demonstrate that assemblies of people can occur without formal
organization;
c) that the group submit to terms and conditions that can be added to
a permit even after a permit is signed, thus effectively adding a
second tier of qualifications that is not subject to judicial review;
and
d) that any person signing such a permit takes on untold liabilities
concerning the actions of any of the other participants.
These rulings Judge Alito concurred with run contrary to 200 plus
years of American jurisprudence concerning rights of public assembly
and expression, including priceless rulings put in place over previous
generations right up thru the recent civil rights victories in such
famous cases as Claiborne Hardware and Shuttlesworth. The scope of this
letter does not give me space to enumerate all the losses of liberties
of expressive assembly that this one case represents.
I (and my two co-defendants) were the first people ever jailed under
the new regulation (32CFR251.54.10k), and Judge Samuel Alito apparently
felt that despite the fact that there was no claim whatsoever
concerning damage to any Federal lands or property, nor any claim of
harm done to any person, we merited time in Federal prison for having
contested this regulation.
To round out the picture you should know that the Forest Service and
Agriculture Department, in the interests of avoiding further ticketing
and jailing of expressive assembly participants, have since met
repeatedly with event participants, then issued formal letters, and
developed new wording placed in Group Use Permits that effectively
sidesteps some of the draconian clauses of the current regulation.
Regardless of that, the fact stands that Judge Alito found it
reasonable to diminish the Freedom of Peaceable Expressive Assembly
enshrined by our nation’s Founders in the First Amendment to our
Constitution.
I would be pleased and willing to provide your staffers with any
details, citations, documents or information concerning this case. In
the public discussions over Judge Alito’s qualifications and lack
thereof I have seen no reference to this ruling at all. I believe that
it adds to the picture of a man for whom the values of the Rights of
the American people are considerably less than our Founders intended
and considerably less than the American people deserve.
Thank you for your time in reading this.
Most sincerely,
Garrick Beck
.................................
noguns sheehan, santa cruz, ca.
By
noguns, at 1:09 AM, January 07, 2006
good to hear from you all again. It seems to me that in the last 20 years anyone can BUY a visit or sleep over in the White House. I know Bubba did it on a regular basis.
By
Cal Trask, at 4:55 PM, January 07, 2006
As a side note,
noguns, how do you manage to stay so idealistic? There aren't very many like you left. A good bit of the 60's movement folks are now the mainstream appethetic people whom you speak of. Somehow we should all capture the idealism of our youth! Unfortunately many of us have lost that.
By
Cal Trask, at 5:02 PM, January 07, 2006
I haven't read much about the Judge. I did hear that he was a Christian but respected by both sides of the aisle. Does anyone know why some factions hate him?
By
Cal Trask, at 5:04 PM, January 07, 2006
Cal,
It is good to see you again as well. Check out your New Year's post. I did a point counter-point last night.
I agree, there is too much money in politics. However, some new blood is entering the ring. Check out tony4congress2006.com He is a Christian Democrat running in my district. I met the man for lunch today. Visit his blog. He is much like you and I. Ask him about Alito. I don't have much info myself.
By
REB 84, at 9:06 PM, January 07, 2006
cal,
it is that i tend to be with a group of us that never looked back ... we kept going forward in our idealizm and held each other's feet to the fire on everything ...
we have lived "real" lives and are in a continuous conversation for the past 33 1/2 years ... we mostly see each other once a year ... that kept us "young" in our minds and hearts and as we are still doing what we always did we have not lost sight of the goal ... FREEDOM ... RESPECT ... RESPONSIBILITY to one another.
i always say we come together once a year, to pretend to be the people we are trying to become. it causes us to rise to the occasion ... not that we haven't let ourselves down many times over the years ...
it is a living theatre project as are our efforcts to preserve this UNION ... this "idealistic country" this Constitution
Yeah ! lets get that 'youthful' idealism back ... not so difficult to do.
about the nominee Alito ... because he has already shown where he stands on the serious stuff ... and is respected for thinking stuff through, his decisions have supported imperial presidency and i think with all we "know" to have happened so far and much of what we "suspect" to be going on ...
it would be a very dangerous court appointment as from that minute on how would we ever get back to check and balances ... none of us want the worst ... so we should nip this in the bud and say no one party can control all of it ...
1/2 of the citizenry would be forever enslaved, unless they fought back and we have aready gone there .... we know better now ... we should be able to turn this around with respect and agreements ...
noguns sheehan
By
noguns, at 12:59 AM, January 08, 2006
Garrick Beck just sent me this intro to his letter, that i posted above; as someone asked for more information on dailykos ...
...................................
Introduction to my Leahy Committee Letter about Alito’s ruling in my peaceable assembly case
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s a circle of friends composed of anti-war activists and returning Vietnam veterans conceived of a get-together, a “Gathering” that would highlight the positive aspects of the peace culture of that era: different kinds of people getting along with each other; environmentalism; a renewed spirituality; a non-racist, non-sexist, non-ageist society; the idea that people’s basic food, shelter and health needs were the cooperative responsibility of the commonwealth; the notion that a community could provide these things without bosses and wages; even recycling. From this was born the annual Rainbow Gathering, an event that has been held for free on public lands for the past 35 years.
There have been no charges of environmental damage in all that time. Tiny communities in rural America have benefited enormously from the economic impact of thousands of people coming thru and spending on supplies and services.
Over the years teams of people from the Gathering worked with local Forest Service employees and State or County officials to monitor water, make decisions about land usage, traffic, and to work together to deal with the occasional misbehaver. Medics, nurses and doctors met with and worked with local health officials.
Rainbows and Forest Officers developed an “Operating Plan” that apportioned areas of responsibility for protecting these public interests. And these worked extremely well for decades.
But that wasn’t enough for officials in the Washington, D.C.-based bureaucracy. As the information about these non-commercial, non-advertised events trickled up the information ladder, bureaucrats far removed from the field decided that it was their duty to regulate these peaceable public assemblies. If they had only aimed at environmental and public safety concerns there would have been little conflict. But they aimed at the freeform style of the participants as well, writing into law demands that all such assemblies must designate officers or agents in order to receive governmental permission to assemble. In other words: no more public assembly without being organized and having a system to select and ordain leaders. No more peaceable assembly for groups without a structure with official positions.
Along with this, the regulation writers threw in other conditions concerning liability; removing judicial review of permit terms or conditions that might be unfair or impossible to meet; and allowing that large groups merely assembling for recreation would not have to meet the same criteria as those of us assembling with an idea to express.
In several extended law cases in the 1980’s two sets of these regulations were discarded as Unconstitutional. In the mid-1990’s a third set of these regs was installed and has since been found to be lawful. I believe that the difference between these rulings stems not from the improvement of the regulation but from the difference in who’s on the bench. Judge Samuel Alito was one of the judges who ruled in favor of extending the government’s power to control who can and who can’t peaceably assemble.
Over these past 35 years I have been in no other trouble with the law. I am a small business owner in Santa Fe, New Mexico where I have lived and worked for the past decade. I am happily married and have three grownup children.
posted with Garrick's permission.
noguns sheehan, santa cruz, ca.
By
noguns, at 9:30 PM, January 08, 2006
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