Bushwacked again!

[mosc]

Sorry to bother our non-US readers but...

President Bush is now asking Congress to hastily approve one of the
biggest spending bills ever -- 820 billion dollars. Bush and his
people are also cutting lots of last-minute, back-room deals, doing
favors for their friends who run huge corporations, at our expense.

Last-minute giveaways in this bill include:

- Rolling back rules requiring that people be paid for overtime. Eight
million hard-working families count on these fair compensation rules.

- Allowing media giants to monopolize even more local media outlets
than before. Companies like Fox that have bought more outlets than
current law allows would now be allowed to keep them. In fact, this
bill raises the limit just the amount that Fox needs.

Please join me in calling on Congress to stop this bill, at:

http://www.moveon.org/looting/

Many of the bill's worst provisions have been inserted at the last
minute by top Republican negotiators. The final bill, more than 400
pages long, was first shared with Democrats the day they were leaving
for Thanksgiving (Tues. Nov. 25th), in an obvious attempt to force an
immediate vote, sight unseen.

Instead, Congress is returning for a special session next week. The
House is expected to vote on it on Monday, December 8th. The Senate
is being asked to approve it on Tuesday the 9th.

But as Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "A legislator would have to have
rocks in their head to agree to something they haven't yet read."

I couldn't agree more.

Especially when you consider that majorities in both houses of Congress
have already rejected both the media ownership change and the overtime
rollback.

Process aside, the spending itself is also outrageous. It's part of a
long pattern of Bush spending billions of our tax dollars to reward his
friends and campaign contributors, a pattern the Nobel prize-winning
economist George Akerlof has described as "a form of looting."

Please join me in calling on Congress to stop it, at:

http://www.moveon.org/looting/

Thank you.

[Cyxeris]

Every election is (in theory) a potential revolution. Unfortunate that things are allowed to get to this point, and it always gets worse.

I am afraid of our government. I am afraid of speaking my mind. doesn't mean I don't, or wont, but I am certainly fearful of the consequences in doing so. Can you say Patriot Act? I know you can.

Cyx

[mosc]

Cyx.

We are so fucked - they don't even care if we know it or say it.

[Cyxeris]

Good point.

Makes being non-apathetic a burden, doesn't it?

Cyx

[elektro80]

Makes me wonder when your most excellent "Office of Homeland Security" will decide that art is nasty and start burning books and CDs.

[Cyxeris]

Perhaps Electro-Music should play it safe and become an off-shore operation, on a barge floating around in international waters or something.

And to top it all off you have the American public and their horrifying lack of reaction to these things. They just stand by and let it happen. In a speech regarding "Bowling for Columbine," Michael Moore made a very good point. He talked about the parents outside the school, and the police line cordoning off the entire building. While kids were inside bleeding to death, the parents were held at bay by the police. The crowds did not rush the building to help their own children, they obeyed the police, who themselves waited several hours before entering the building.

If that isn't enough to make people take it upon themselves to deal with a situation... ...what is?

"Where do you draw the line once you know what the enemy is? How long would the Nazis have kept it up, General, if every Jew they came after had met them with a gun in his hand?"

-Walter Matthau (Matuschanskayasky), "Failsafe"

Cyx