There are 48 days left until the national referendum on the CHARACTER, COMPETENCE and CREDIBILITY of the _resident and VICE _resident…Over one thousand US soldiers are dead in an unnecessary, ill-planned Mega Mogadishu predicated on LIES, the US federal budget has been plunged into a deficit of over four hundred billion dollars, the Western Alliance is seriously fractured, the US is isolated and pinned down, the ranks of Al Qaeda style terrorists have swelled, and we have lost four years we could not afford to lose on vital national security issues like nuclear proliferation, global warming and AIDS in Africa…Here are some vital stories that should fill the air waves and command headlines above the fold, but they won’t…Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. And, please, remember that the US regimestream media does not want to inform you about the 2004 election campaign, it wants to DISinform you about the 2004 election campaign…The Bush cabal, its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party and their sponsors in the US regimestream news media form a Triad of common purpose for shared special interests (oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.)…Noam Chomsky, Cornell West and Bonnie Raitt know what time it is in America? Do you? ”Let us not talk falsely now. The hour is getting late!” There is an Electoral Uprising coming at the Ballot Box in November 2004…
Patricia Wilson, Reuters: Democratic candidate John Kerry unleashed a stinging indictment of President Bush's economic stewardship on Wednesday and urged his Republican rival to take responsibility instead of playing the victim. "This president has created more excuses than jobs," Kerry said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club…"His is the excuse presidency -- never wrong, never responsible, never to blame ... no, it's not our fault; no, there's nothing wrong; no, we can't do better; no, we haven't made a single mistake," Kerry said.
The Democratic nominee underscored his hard-hitting broadside by writing in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that "cleaning up President Bush's fiscal mess will not be easy."
He chose and he chose and he chose and every single time it was middle-class Americans who paid the price," Kerry said. "George Bush (news - web sites) accomplished all this in only four years. Imagine what he could do in another four years."
Kerry cited a litany of statistics -- job losses, 8 million Americans looking for work, 45 million without health insurance, 4.3 million more at the poverty level, 220,000 who could not afford to go to college last year, and a $1,500 decline in the average family's income.
"We know the truth," he said. "Nearly every choice has made it worse. You can even say that George Bush is proud of the fact that not even failure can cause him to change his mind."
Mark Brunswick and Patricia Lopez, Star Tribune: The chairman of the state's Republican Party called on the Star Tribune on Friday to dismiss the long-time director of its Minnesota Poll, claiming that the poll results are consistently inaccurate in a way that favors the Democratic Party.
"When a newspaper conducts a poll on a political race and then prints an article on that poll, it is doing more than reporting news; it is creating news," said Ron Eibensteiner, in a letter to Star Tribune Publisher and President J. Keith Moyer.
Star Tribune Editor Anders Gyllenhaal defended the poll in a prepared statement. "We have been operating one of the most respected and accurate polls in the country for more than half a century and always have been completely open and forthcoming about how we conduct our polls," Gyllenhaal said. He called Eibensteiner's personal attack on poll director Rob Daves "shameful and misdirected."
At a news conference at GOP headquarters, Eibensteiner said: "Their poll numbers are flawed, so therefore, take it as a grain of salt."
The poll results, he said, reinforce the image of the Star Tribune as a "mouthpiece and cheerleader for the Democrats."
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable: According to the reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the trend toward limiting journalists' access to information in the wake, and under the invocation, of 9/11 continues to grow.
"Citizens seem to not realize how drastically their right to know has been limited in the last three years," said Lucy Dalglish, RCFP director, in a statement on the release of its annual update, "Hoefront Confidential. "Even journalists will be astonished at the lengthy list of actions taken by public officials to turn basic government information into state secrets."
The committee has been keeping a running journalistic "threat level" that mirror's the government's own color-coded terrorist threat warnings. The two categories that remain at red alert are Freedom of Information Act restrictions and Access to Terrorism and Immigrations Proceedings, but two other categories have moved from elevated (yellow) to high (orange) status since last year's report: USA PATRIOT Act restrictions and reporters privilege.
Referring to the Patriot Act, the report concludes: " [T]he Justice Department has shown its willingness to use its powers aggressively, even making clear that a law barring newsroom searches is trumped by the [Act} when it comes to terrorism investigations.
On the issue of reporter privilege, it says: "With national security concerns dominating American life, U.S. journalists face an increased likelihood since September 11 of being seen as government informants, with no constitutional right to keep sources confidential or to withhold unpublished materials from prosecutors."
James Ridgeway, Village Voice: A group of 25 former federal employees directly involved in the government's counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs held a press conference here this morning to lambaste both the 9-11 Commission and the Bush administration for failing to hold government officials accountable for failures leading up to 9-11.
The ex-employees, from the FBI, CIA, FAA, Customs, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, had firsthand knowledge of their agencies' activities in counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
The 25 signed a letter to Congress—organized by Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI whistleblower who is blocked from telling what she knows by a Justice Department gag order—citing "intentional actions or inaction by individuals responsible for our national security, actions or inaction dictated by motives other than the security of the people of the United States."
The 9-11 Commission's final report, the letter added, "deliberately ignores officials and civil servants who were, and still are, clearly negligent and/or derelict in their duties to the nation. If these individuals are protected, rather than held accountable, the mindset that enabled 9-11 will persist, no matter how many layers of bureaucracy are added, and no matter how much money is poured into the agencies. Character counts. Personal integrity, courage, and professionalism make the difference. Only a commission bent on holding no one responsible and reaching unanimity could have missed that."
Liz Sidota, Associated Press: [Sen. John Edwards (D-NC)] Democrats' vice presidential candidate assailed the potential cost of Bush policies in a second term and said of the president: "I think he believes that he's Ken Lay and America is his Enron. The truth of the matter is that what happens when a CEO runs a company the way that George Bush has run America, they get fired.
"And that's exactly what's going to happen. George Bush is going to be fired by the American people."
The North Carolina senator, running mate to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, made his remarks while accepting the endorsements of more than 30 chief executive officers of outdoor equipment companies, including Patagonia, Columbia and Cascade Designs, before a town hall meeting in a suburb of Portland.
"They will say just about anything," Edwards said of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. "What they don't want people to know is that they're proposing another $3 trillion in spending and they have absolutely no way to pay for it." "The truth is they want to make sure that their friends, particularly their friends in places like Halliburton, are well taken care of," Edwards said, a reference to the company once led by Cheney. "But they're going to attach $3 trillion of additional debt onto our children and onto our grandchildren."
Bush's brother at centre of row over Nader nomination on Florida ballot
Julian Borger, Guardian: Florida and Jeb Bush, the president's brother, were once more at the centre of a legal row over the presidential election yesterday, after Governor Bush's administration intervened to ensure Ralph Nader was on the state ballot.
Florida Democrats, fearing Mr Nader will take votes away from them, accused the state government of flouting a court order last Wednesday that removed the third party candidate and veteran consumer activist from the ballot, on the grounds that the group sponsoring him, the Reform party, was not a nationally recognised party.
Mr Nader's lawyers challenged the verdict but his name remained off the state ballot pending the appeal. However, Governor Bush's secretary of state, Glenda Hood, has stepped in and submitted her own appeal which automatically suspended the court order, putting Mr Nader back in the running just in time for absentee ballots to be posted to 50,000 US soldiers and other overseas voters by a Saturday deadline.
Democratic outrage was fuelled when Ms Hood's office blamed Hurricane Ivan, which is bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico coast, for its unusual intervention on behalf of a third party candidate.
A hearing on the case had been scheduled for tomorrow, but the state elections director Dawn Roberts claimed that Ivan might make that hearing impossible, and potentially deny Mr Nader's right to be on the ballot.
"There remains a substantial question as to when such a hearing on the permanent injunction will be held, considering the track of Hurricane Ivan," Ms Roberts argued in a memorandum to county election supervisors who had just ordered new ballots printed without Mr Nader's name.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans were being evacuated yesterday from a swath of the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle in the west of the state, in anticipation of the hurricane as it moved north-west out of the Caribbean.
Ms Hood denied that the state government was taking sides, but simply intervening to ensure that nobody's democratic rights were infringed.
"We are acting as an honest broker," the Florida secretary of state said
www.truthout.org: As Ralph Nader campaigns in swing state after swing state, a large group of prominent endorsers from Nader 2000 is calling for support for Kerry in those states in order to oust Bush.
Four years ago this month, Nader convened news conferences in several cities to unveil his personally-selected "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee" of leading supporters. Today (Sept. 14), more than 70 members of Nader's 2000 committee joined in issuing a statement that urges "support for Kerry/Edwards in all swing states" because "removing George W. Bush from office should be the top priority in the 2004 presidential election."
Signers of the statement include Noam Chomsky, Ben Cohen, Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jim Hightower, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Cornel West and Howard Zinn. The statement and a current list of signers can be viewed at: vote2stopbush.com.
The statement and list will be widely circulated, especially via the Internet, to reach as many progressive or disaffected voters in swing states as possible between now and Election Day. This effort is not coordinated in any way with the Kerry Campaign or the Democratic Party.
Thwart the Theft of the Second Presidential Election, Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
Last update: September 11, 2004 at 6:58 AM
GOP chairman urges Star Tribune to fire poll director
Mark Brunswick and Patricia Lopez
Star Tribune
Published September 11, 2004
The chairman of the state's Republican Party called on the Star Tribune on Friday to dismiss the long-time director of its Minnesota Poll, claiming that the poll results are consistently inaccurate in a way that favors the Democratic Party.
"When a newspaper conducts a poll on a political race and then prints an article on that poll, it is doing more than reporting news; it is creating news," said Ron Eibensteiner, in a letter to Star Tribune Publisher and President J. Keith Moyer.
Star Tribune Editor Anders Gyllenhaal defended the poll in a prepared statement. "We have been operating one of the most respected and accurate polls in the country for more than half a century and always have been completely open and forthcoming about how we conduct our polls," Gyllenhaal said. He called Eibensteiner's personal attack on poll director Rob Daves "shameful and misdirected."
At a news conference at GOP headquarters, Eibensteiner said: "Their poll numbers are flawed, so therefore, take it as a grain of salt."
The poll results, he said, reinforce the image of the Star Tribune as a "mouthpiece and cheerleader for the Democrats."
Eibensteiner charged that the poll has underestimated Republican results by an average of 5.2 points since 1987.
Daves called the charges "patently false" in a prepared statement and noted that polls are snapshots in time that "do not necessarily predict the final outcome of the election."
Eibensteiner's comments are the latest salvo in a continuing complaint from the Republican Party. Within the last year, the Minnesota Poll has also been the subject of critical reports in the newsletter Politics in Minnesota and in the magazine Minnesota Law and Politics.
Displaying a chart that showed poll results going back to the Minnesota Poll's inception in 1944, Eibensteiner said that particularly since 1998, the poll has underestimated Republican presence in the state.
That year, the final poll showed GOP gubernatorial candidate Norm Coleman with 30 percent and DFLer Hubert Humphrey III with 35 percent. On Election Day, Coleman had 34 percent and Humphrey 28 percent, and the winner was Independent Jesse Ventura.
In the 2000 election, the Minnesota Poll showed Republicans George Bush and U.S. Sen. Rod Grams each with 37 percent. On Election Day, Bush took 45.5 percent of the vote, Grams 43.29 percent. Bob Ward of Alexandria, Va., who has done polling for the Minnesota Republican Party, said the Minnesota Poll's use of an "overly academic" weighting methodology may skew the poll's sampling.
The National Council on Public Polls, an association of polling organizations established in 1969 to set standards for public opinion polling, reviewed 159 public polls for the 2002 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns in the final days of the election campaign.
In Minnesota, the Minnesota Poll had an average error rate of 3 percentage points on where a candidate would finish. Zogby International, which also did polling in Minnesota, had an average error rate of 4 percentage points. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., which did polling for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minnesota Public Radio, had an average error rate of 2 percentage points. Only Mason-Dixon's final poll correctly foreshadowed Norm Coleman's victory over Walter Mondale in an abbreviated race that remained fluid in its final days.
The final Minnesota Poll, conducted on the Sunday and Monday before the election and published with the election results on Wednesday, showed a 45-45 percent tie.
Fifty-four percent of the other states' polls had an error rate of 2 percentage points or less, putting Zogby and the Minnesota Poll below the national median in accuracy, according to the council.
Harry O'Neill, chairman of the National Polling Review Board, said that the Minnesota Poll and Daves enjoy a strong reputation nationally and that the poll uses proper methodology and obeys all ethical rules.
Ben Taylor, senior vice president of communications for the Star Tribune, said that the paper does not indicate when it is conducting polls, but that it will publish additional polls through Election Day, employing the same methodology it has used in the past.
Mark Brunswick is at
mbrunswick@startribune.com.
© Copyright 2004 Star Tribune. All rights reserved
w w w . b r o a d c a s t i n g c a b l e . c o m
Journalists' Info Threat Level Raised
By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/13/2004 1:46:00 PM
According to the reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the trend toward limiting journalists' access to information in the wake, and under the invocation, of 9/11 continues to grow.
"Citizens seem to not realize how drastically their right to know has been limited in the last three years," said Lucy Dalglish, RCFP director, in a statement on the release of its annual update, "Hoefront Confidential. "Even journalists will be astonished at the lengthy list of actions taken by public officials to turn basic government information into state secrets."
The committee has been keeping a running journalistic "threat level" that mirror's the government's own color-coded terrorist threat warnings. The two categories that remain at red alert are Freedom of Information Act restrictions and Access to Terrorism and Immigrations Proceedings, but two other categories have moved from elevated (yellow) to high (orange) status since last year's report: USA PATRIOT Act restrictions and reporters privilege.
Referring to the Patriot Act, the report concludes: " [T]he Justice Department has shown its willingness to use its powers aggressively, even making clear that a law barring newsroom searches is trumped by the [Act} when it comes to terrorism investigations.
On the issue of reporter privilege, it says: "With national security concerns dominating American life, U.S. journalists face an increased likelihood since September 11 of being seen as government informants, with no constitutional right to keep sources confidential or to withhold unpublished materials from prosecutors."
Dalglish told B&C that she was particularly concerned about access to terrorism and immigrations proceedings. The threat was red last year and red this year, the top threat level, "but if I could have made it neon, I would have," she said. "Incredible things have been happening to keep the public in the dark on anything quasi-judicial. And it's coming from the Bush administration and its coming from the courts and military tribunals and hearings…. We are locking people up and trying them in secret." As a lawyer, she says, "that is the most frightening thing that is happening."
She says she would also make the FOYA threats neon (again, high in both 2003 and 2004).
She says the increased threat level on reporter privilege is understandable. When the government shuts down access to information, sometimes the only way to get it is through leaks, she points out. And when you have leaks, she says, the government is going to try to go after the leakers by going after the media and their sources. Expect to see a lot more of that, Dalglish says.
The report is sent to newspeople, as well as think tanks and legislators, among others.
nation
villagevoice.com exclusive
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
Ex-Feds Blast 9-11 Panel and Bush
Government agencies roasted for screw-ups in war on "terror"
September 13th, 2004 5:10 PM
WASHINGTON, D.C.—A group of 25 former federal employees directly involved in the government's counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs held a press conference here this morning to lambaste both the 9-11 Commission and the Bush administration for failing to hold government officials accountable for failures leading up to 9-11.
The ex-employees, from the FBI, CIA, FAA, Customs, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, had firsthand knowledge of their agencies' activities in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Bogdan Dzakovic, a former special agent at the FAA, said he repeatedly sought to warn his superiors of mismanagement and the dangers of terrorism, but to no avail. He was a leader of a "Red Team" at FAA, engaged in preparing for terrorist attacks. But he said the security measures in his agency were "little more than window dressing," and quoted one frustrated colleague as saying, "The FAA is so screwed up I don't know where to begin."
Diane Kleiman, a former Customs agent at JFK who was fired in 1999, scoffed at the idea that airport security has been improved. Emphasis on checking passengers coming into the airport hides the real problems in the back of the airport, she said, where literally anybody can board a parked plane. She outlined a scenario, for instance, in which, say, 10 terrorists could apply to be cargo handlers (a job with high turnover), get hired and work, but then quit, retaining their passes, which give them access to ramps and the unlocked aircraft. They then could enter the airports with backpacks full of explosives, get on the planes, stash the bags in the cargo holds, and leave. In this way, 10 planes with all their passengers could be blown up.
Holding up a special government security-clearance pass, she described how lax airport security remains. Her pass gave her entrance to every nook and cranny of the airport, from ramps to runways to planes to cargo-handling entrances. Such a pass is worth thousands of dollars to any would-be terrorist. When she was fired, nobody took this valuable passport from her. "The leadership and management at JFK are terrible," she said.
The 25 signed a letter to Congress—organized by Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI whistleblower who is blocked from telling what she knows by a Justice Department gag order—citing "intentional actions or inaction by individuals responsible for our national security, actions or inaction dictated by motives other than the security of the people of the United States."
The 9-11 Commission's final report, the letter added, "deliberately ignores officials and civil servants who were, and still are, clearly negligent and/or derelict in their duties to the nation. If these individuals are protected, rather than held accountable, the mindset that enabled 9-11 will persist, no matter how many layers of bureaucracy are added, and no matter how much money is poured into the agencies. Character counts. Personal integrity, courage, and professionalism make the difference. Only a commission bent on holding no one responsible and reaching unanimity could have missed that."
Edwards compares Bush to Enron's Lay
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press
Last Updated 7:51 pm PDT Tuesday, September 14, 2004
OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) - Democratic Sen. John Edwards compared President Bush to former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay on Tuesday and predicted Bush "is going to be fired" by voters for the way he has run the country.
Lay, a Bush friend and campaign contributor, resigned under pressure after the giant energy company's collapse and has pleaded innocent to charges of fraud, conspiracy and false statements to banks.
The Democrats' vice presidential candidate assailed the potential cost of Bush policies in a second term and said of the president: "I think he believes that he's Ken Lay and America is his Enron. The truth of the matter is that what happens when a CEO runs a company the way that George Bush has run America, they get fired.
"And that's exactly what's going to happen. George Bush is going to be fired by the American people."
The North Carolina senator, running mate to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, made his remarks while accepting the endorsements of more than 30 chief executive officers of outdoor equipment companies, including Patagonia, Columbia and Cascade Designs, before a town hall meeting in a suburb of Portland.
On the last part of a swing through the West, Edwards was spending the day campaigning in a state that Al Gore won by less than one percentage point in 2000. Polls show Kerry leading in the state this year.
Edwards said the Bush campaign has criticized possible costs of Kerry's proposals while hiding the potential costs of its own.
"They will say just about anything," Edwards said of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. "What they don't want people to know is that they're proposing another $3 trillion in spending and they have absolutely no way to pay for it."
"The truth is they want to make sure that their friends, particularly their friends in places like Halliburton, are well taken care of," Edwards said, a reference to the company once led by Cheney. "But they're going to attach $3 trillion of additional debt onto our children and onto our grandchildren."
Brian Jones, a Bush campaign spokesman, dismissed Edwards' comments as "flailing, baseless attacks," while the campaign challenged the $3 trillion figure.
"They're trying to hide the fact that they have not put forth a plan for paying for their own proposals," Jones said.
On the campaign trail, Bush often claims that the Kerry-Edwards plan would cost $2 trillion. The Democrats' campaign disputes the figure, arguing that the Kerry-Edwards health care and education proposals would be paid for by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.
Bush's brother at centre of row over Nader nomination on Florida ballot
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday September 15, 2004
The Guardian
Florida and Jeb Bush, the president's brother, were once more at the centre of a legal row over the presidential election yesterday, after Governor Bush's administration intervened to ensure Ralph Nader was on the state ballot.
Florida Democrats, fearing Mr Nader will take votes away from them, accused the state government of flouting a court order last Wednesday that removed the third party candidate and veteran consumer activist from the ballot, on the grounds that the group sponsoring him, the Reform party, was not a nationally recognised party.
Mr Nader's lawyers challenged the verdict but his name remained off the state ballot pending the appeal. However, Governor Bush's secretary of state, Glenda Hood, has stepped in and submitted her own appeal which automatically suspended the court order, putting Mr Nader back in the running just in time for absentee ballots to be posted to 50,000 US soldiers and other overseas voters by a Saturday deadline.
"This is blatant political manoeuvring by Jeb Bush to give his brother a leg-up on election day," the Florida Democratic party's chairman, Scott Maddox, said. "And it's just plain wrong."
Once Mr Nader's name was on absentee ballots, the state government would use the fact to strengthen the case to include it on all ballots across Florida on election day, Mr Maddox claimed.
Democrats also pointed out that Mr Nader's campaign had hired a Republican lawyer, Kenneth Sukhia, who worked for Mr Bush in the dramatic 2000 election recount, as proof that the Bush White House was conniving in Nader's efforts to get on to the ballot.
Democratic outrage was fuelled when Ms Hood's office blamed Hurricane Ivan, which is bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico coast, for its unusual intervention on behalf of a third party candidate.
A hearing on the case had been scheduled for tomorrow, but the state elections director Dawn Roberts claimed that Ivan might make that hearing impossible, and potentially deny Mr Nader's right to be on the ballot.
"There remains a substantial question as to when such a hearing on the permanent injunction will be held, considering the track of Hurricane Ivan," Ms Roberts argued in a memorandum to county election supervisors who had just ordered new ballots printed without Mr Nader's name.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans were being evacuated yesterday from a swath of the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle in the west of the state, in anticipation of the hurricane as it moved north-west out of the Caribbean.
Ms Hood denied that the state government was taking sides, but simply intervening to ensure that nobody's democratic rights were infringed.
"We are acting as an honest broker," the Florida secretary of state said
Governor Bush's administration was the focus of complaints in 2000, when thousands of black Floridians were removed from electoral lists because they were wrongly classified as former felons without voting rights.
Ms Hood's predecessor, Katherine Harris, was also attacked by Democrats at the time for summarily rejecting their appeals against the first vote count, and certifying the initial results which gave the state, and the presidency, to George Bush.
After five weeks of legal wrangling, the US supreme court weighed in and awarded the election, by a one-vote majority to Mr Bush.
This year, the state is being carefully scrutinised for its conduct of the election, and was recently forced to abandon the use of another felons list that was found to be faulty. Democrats and civil rights activists have pointed towards the use this year of computer voting as a possible new source of errors and fraud.
Mr Nader won 97,000 votes in Florida four years ago as the Green party candidate, when Mr Bush was declared to have clinched the election by a margin of only 537 over Al Gore. However, some polls this year have suggested he would draw no more votes away from John Kerry than from President Bush.
Nader's Top Endorsers From 2000 Urge
"Swing States" Support For Kerry
t r u t h o u t | Press Release
Tuesday 14 September 2004
Washington - As Ralph Nader campaigns in swing state after swing state, a large group of prominent endorsers from Nader 2000 is calling for support for Kerry in those states in order to oust Bush.
Four years ago this month, Nader convened news conferences in several cities to unveil his personally-selected "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee" of leading supporters. Today (Sept. 14), more than 70 members of Nader's 2000 committee joined in issuing a statement that urges "support for Kerry/Edwards in all swing states" because "removing George W. Bush from office should be the top priority in the 2004 presidential election."
Signers of the statement include Noam Chomsky, Ben Cohen, Phil Donahue, Barbara Ehrenreich, Jim Hightower, Bonnie Raitt, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Cornel West and Howard Zinn. The statement and a current list of signers can be viewed at: vote2stopbush.com.
The statement and list will be widely circulated, especially via the Internet, to reach as many progressive or disaffected voters in swing states as possible between now and Election Day. This effort is not coordinated in any way with the Kerry Campaign or the Democratic Party.
The statement reads as follows:
Nader 2000 Leaders United To Defeat Bush
We, the undersigned, were selected by Ralph Nader to be members of his 113-person national "Nader 2000 Citizens Committee." This year, we urge support for Kerry/Edwards in all "swing states," even while we strongly disagree with Kerry's policies on Iraq and other issues. For people seeking progressive social change in the United States, removing George W. Bush from office should be the top priority in the 2004 presidential election. Progressive votes for John Kerry in swing states may prove decisive in attaining this vital goal.
• David Barsamian, Author, Radio Interviewer
• Juliette Beck, California Citizens for Fair Trade
• Herbert Bernstein, Professor of Physics at Hampshire College
• Thomas Berry, Author, Dream of the Earth
• Wendell Berry, Farmer and Writer
• Norman Birnbaum, Author and Educator
• Grace Lee Boggs, Detroit Activist and Writer
• Blase Bonpane, Office of the Americas
• Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas
• Eric Brakken, Former Staffer, United Students Against Sweatshops
• Ira Byock, Palliative Care Physician, Author of Dying Well
• Edgar Cahn, Founder of Time Banking
• John Cavanagh, Director of Institute for Policy Studies
• Noam Chomsky, Author and Professor at MIT
• Steve Cobble, Strategist, Jackson '88, Nader '00, Kucinich '04
• Ben Cohen, Co-founder of Ben & Jerry's
• Peter Coyote, Actor and Writer
• Ronnie Cummins, Director of Organic Consumers Association
• Herman Daly, Professor at University of Maryland
• Iris DeMent, Musician/Songwriter
• Phil Donahue, Former Talk Show Host
• Mark Dowie, Journalist, Former Editor/Publisher of Mother Jones
• Barbara Dudley, Former President, Greenpeace and National Lawyers Guild
• Ronnie Dugger, Co-founder of Alliance for Democracy
• Troy Duster, Professor at New York University
• Barbara Ehrenreich, Political Essayist and Social Critic
• Richard Falk, Center of International Studies, Princeton University
• Jim Goodman, Organic Dairy Farmer
• Rebecca Goodman, Organic Dairy Farmer
• Doris (Granny D) Haddock, Senate Candidate, Reform Activist
• Paul Hawken, Author, Economist
• Randy Hayes, Founder, Rainforest Action Network and Director of Sustainability, City of Oakland
• Jim Hightower, Author and Commentator
• Wes Jackson, The Land Institute
• David Kairys, Law Professor at Temple University and Author
• Ynestra King, Ecofeminist Writer/Activist
• John Kinsman, Family Farm Defenders
• Philip M. Klasky, Co-director, Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition
• David Korten, Author of When Corporations Rule the World
• Frances Korten, Director of Positive Futures Network
• Saul Landau, California State Polytechnic University
• Rabbi Michael Lerner, The Tikkun Community
• Theodore Lowi, Political Scientist, Author
• Howard Lyman, Former Rancher, Vegetarian Activist
• Joanna Macy, Author and Scholar
• Jerry Mander, President of International Forum on Globalization
• Manning Marable, Institute for Research in African American Studies, Columbia
• Redwood Mary, Plight of the Redwoods Campaign
• Robert McChesney, Professor, University of Illinois
• Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, University of California-Berkeley
• Peter Montague, Environmental Research Foundation
• Gus Newport, Former Mayor of Berkeley, California
• Ruth Ozeki, Novelist
• Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York
• Bonnie Raitt, Guitarist/Singer/Songwriter
• Sheldon Rampton, Co-author of Banana Republicans
• Marcus Raskin, Author
• Tim Robbins
• Vicki Robin, New Road Map Foundation
• Susan Sarandon, Actor and Activist
• John Schaeffer, Founder of Real Goods Trading Company
• Michelle Shocked, Musician
• John Stauber, Co-author of Banana Republicans
• Andrew Strauss, Professor at Widener University School of Law
• Charlotte Talberth, Max and Anna Levinson Foundation
• Meredith Tax, Writer and Human Rights Activist
• Studs Terkel, Author, Oral Historian
• Tom Tomorrow, Cartoonist
• Sarah van Gelder, Editor of YES! Magazine
• Eddie Vedder, Musician, Pearl Jam
• Harvey Wasserman, Author of Harvey Wasserman's History of the US
• Cornel West, Professor, Author of Democracy Matters
• Sheldon Wolin, Professor Emeritus, Princeton University
• Howard Zinn, Historian and Author
• Medea Benjamin, Code Pink
• Jackson Browne
• Jerry Greenfield, Ben & Jerry's Co-founder
• Bob Harris, Author
• Norman Solomon, Columnist
Signers endorse this statement as individuals, not as representatives of any group. A frequently updated list of swing states is posted at swing04.com.