Liberation News Service

Theft of the 2004 Election

Rep. Conyers' Letter to Exit Polling Firms: To be
frank, blaming such factors as distant restrictions on
polling places, weather conditions, the age of exit
poll workers, and the fact that multiple precincts
were contained at the same polling place, as your
report does, does not come close to explaining why the
exit polls overstated support for the Kerry/Edwards
ticket in 26 states and support for the Bush/Cheney
ticket in only 4 states. Many of the factors you point
to appear to merely be random characteristics of the
election and your exit polling, rather than
quantifiable and justifiable explanations.
Nor can I believe that the massive discrepancies can
credibly be written off to eagerness of Kerry voters
to participate in the exit polls. The stakes for our
democracy are simply too high for us to allow this
matter to pass without a serious and substantive
review of the exit poll data. While the election is
over, there is significant bipartisan sentiment in
Congress and around the nation for voting reform. A
complete and full release of the exit poll information
will therefore not only help to resolve lingering
doubts regarding irregularities in the 2004 election,
it will also go a long way towards helping Congress
understand how to best craft these reforms. I am
hopeful that the media companies that contract for
your services will also understand and support the
importance of providing full, complete, and
transparent information in this matter.

Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: Since Election Night,
I've been angry over the refusal of the NEP and the
networks to explain the Exit Polls that proved Kerry
won Ohio, Florida, and the Presidency.
After all, the Ukrainian election was overturned
because exit polls showed Yuschenko won, even though
the government-controlled tabulations showed he lost.
Well, we finally got an "explanation" - and it's
utterly bogus. Here's the CNN version:
Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Posted: 12:17 PM EST
Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote
on November 2, both nationally and in many states,
because more Kerry supporters participated in the
survey than Bush voters, according to an internal
review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.
This is a complicated sentence, so let's make it
simpler.
What if more Kerry supporters participated in the
survey because there were more Kerry supporters?
In other words, what if Kerry actually got more votes
- just as Gore did?
If that statement isn't true, then the only other
explanation is that Bush voters refused to take the
exit poll.
That sounds nutty. What serious explanation can they
offer?
Well, they can't offer one.
The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely
why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to
participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters.
"There were certainly motivational factors that are
impossible to quantify," the report said.
Why should we believe this media-spun "conspiracy
theory" about mysterious "motivatational factors" -
rather than believe the exit poll was accurate, and
Kerry won?

Conyers' Letter to Ohio Attorney General: I write to
express my concern regarding your recent request to
sanction those attorneys who brought a legal challenge
to last year's presidential election in Ohio. In
particular, I am concerned that by seeking official
censure and fines, you are engaged in a selective and
partisan misuse of your legal authority. As eager as
many disgruntled voters are to have a court of law
finally assess the merits of the challenge actions, I
have serious doubts about the validity of the
sanctions case your office is pursuing.
As an initial matter, one would be hard pressed to see
how the legal challenges brought under the Ohio
election challenge statute were "frivolous." First
off, it is widely known that the Ohio presidential
election was literally riddled with irregularities and
improprieties, many of which are set forth in the 102
page report issued by the House Judiciary Committee
Democratic Staff. As a matter
of fact, the problems were so great that Congress was
forced to debate the first challenge to an entire
state's slate of electors since the federal Electoral
Count law was enacted in 1877. In short, there is more
than an abundant record raising serious, substantive
questions about the Ohio presidential election.

Complicity of the Corporatist News Media

George Monbiot, Guardian: The U.S. media is
disciplined by corporate America into promoting the
Republican cause.
On Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be
recrowned. He was elected on a platform suspended in
midair by the power of imagination. He is the leader
of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms
unvisited by reality. And he remains the most powerful
person on earth.
How did this happen? How did a fantasy president from
a world of make believe come to govern a country whose
power was built on hard-headed materialism? To find
out, take a look at two squalid little stories which
have been concluded over the past 10 days…
You can say what you like in the US media, as long as
it helps a Republican president. But slip up once
while questioning him, and you will be torn to shreds.
Even the most grovelling affirmations of loyalty won't
help. The presenter of 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, is the
man who once told his audience" "George Bush is the
president, he makes the decisions and, you know, as
just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell
me where." CBS is owned by the conglomerate Viacom,
whose chairman told reporters: "We believe the
election of a Republican administration is better for
our company." But for Fox News and the shockjocks
syndicated by Clear Channel, Rather's faltering
attempt at investigative journalism is further
evidence of "a liberal media conspiracy"…
The role of the media corporations in the US is
similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere:
they decide what the public will and won't be allowed
to hear, and either punish or recruit the social
deviants who insist on telling a different story. The
journalists they employ do what almost all journalists
working under repressive regimes do: they internalise
the demands of the censor, and understand, before
anyone has told them, what is permissible and what is
not…
So, when they are faced with a choice between a fable
which helps the Republicans, and a reality which hurts
them, they choose the fable. As their fantasies
accumulate, the story they tell about the world veers
further and further from reality. Anyone who tries to
bring the people back down to earth is denounced as a
traitor and a fantasist. And anyone who seeks to
become president must first learn to live in
fairyland.

Robert Parry: “Don’t take on the Bushes” is becoming
an unwritten rule in American journalism. Reporters
can make mistakes in covering other politicians and
suffer little or no consequence, but a false step when
doing a critical piece on the Bushes is a career
killer.
The latest to learn this hard lesson are four
producers at CBS, who demonstrated inadequate care in
checking out memos purportedly written by George W.
Bush’s commanding officer in the Texas Air National
Guard in the early 1970s. For this sloppiness, CBS
fired the four, including Mary Mapes who helped break
last year’s Abu Ghraib torture scandal.
A painful irony for the CBS producers was that the
central points of the memos – that Bush had blown off
a required flight physical and was getting favored
treatment in the National Guard – were already known,
and indeed, were confirmed by the commander’s
secretary in a follow-up interview with CBS. But even
honest mistakes are firing offenses when the Bushes
are involved.
By contrast, journalists understand that they get a
free shot at many other politicians who don’t have the
protective infrastructure that surrounds the Bush
family. Take for example the case of reporters for the
New York Times and the Washington Post who misquoted
Al Gore about his role in the Love Canal toxic waste
clean-up…
But what’s clear now – as the U.S. news media has
learned to tip-toe around Bush family scandals – is
the applicability of that the old adage about the
rich: “The Bushes aren’t like the rest of us.”

Daniel Schorr, Christian Science Monitor: Washington
these days feels a little like Moscow in Soviet times
when the government routinely dispensed information to
the public and the public routinely didn't believe it.
The two main newspapers were the Communist Party
organ, Pravda, (Truth) and the Soviet government
organ, Izvestiya (News). People used to say, "There is
no Izvestiya in Pravda and no Pravda in Izvestiya."
For three years our leaders told us that Iraq for sure
had weapons of mass destruction ... well, pretty sure
... well, maybe. One war later, after scouring the
countryside, the government admits that there weren't
any such weapons. If President Bush were to go on TV
one of these days and say that Iran has developed a
nuclear bomb, requiring American action, who would
believe him?
On a less momentous scale, who can believe TV news
reports when they may turn out to be
government-financed videos?

The War in Iraq is Worse than Immoral or Illegal, It
is Stupid, Insanely Stupid

TOM LASSETER and JONATHAN S. LANDAY, Detroit Free
Press: Unless something dramatic changes, the United
States is heading toward losing the war in Iraq.
A Knight Ridder Newspapers analysis of U.S. government
statistics shows the U.S. military steadily losing
ground to the predominately Sunni Muslim insurgency in
Iraq.
The analysis suggests that, short of a newfound will
by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large
escalation of U.S. troop strength, the United States
won't win the war.

Illegitimate, Incompetent, Corrupt

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation: In 2004 the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the
Inspector Generals (IG) in various departments of the
federal government issued reports revealing fraud,
mismanagement and corruption. Here is my list of the
Bush Administration's Ten Most Outrageous Scandals
thus far uncovered by government investigators:
1. Halliburton's Corruption. Nine different reports
compiled by the GAO, the Coalition Provisional
Authority's IG and the Defense Contract Audit Agency
faulted Halliburton's performance in Iraq, where it
has been awarded more than $10 billion in US
contracts. The government investigators cited, among
other things, significant cost overruns, the
overcharging of the Defense Department (and taxpayers)
by $61 million, illegal kickbacks, failure to police
subcontractors' billing and unauthorized expenses at
the Kuwait Hilton Hotel. The list of abuses will
likely get longer in 2005, as multiple criminal
investigations into Halliburton's work pick up steam.
2. Iraq's Decline. In June 2004 the GAO provided a
bleak assessment of Iraq after fourteen months of US
military occupation, documenting that in critical
areas like security, electricity and the judicial
system Iraq is worse off now than it was before the
war.
3. Abu Ghraib Prison Torture. In late August Maj. Gen.
George Fay released an official Army report charging
that US military personnel committed torture and that
civilian contractors and military intelligence
interrogators played a greater role in abusing
prisoners than previously thought. The Fay report
blamed "a lack of discipline on the part of leaders
and soldiers" and a "failure or lack of leadership" by
senior military commanders in Iraq.

Peter Dizikes, Salon.com: Print it out, send it to
Harry Reid, or just read it and weep. Here are 34
scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's
presidency - every one of them worse than Whitewater.
Once upon a time - about five years ago -
conservative pundits often talked about "scandal
fatigue." Remember scandal fatigue? It was an
affliction supposedly either turning voters against
Democrats or, alternatively, a weariness in the body
politic preventing Republicans from pursuing even more
grievances against Bill Clinton. By any objective
measure, however, after four years of George W. Bush's
presidency, the entire nation should be suffering from
utter scandal exhaustion.
Consider the raw materials of scandal that this
administration has produced: False claims about Iraq's
supposed weapons of mass destruction. Torture in Abu
Ghraib. The virtually treasonous exposure of a CIA
agent by White House officials. And those are just the
best-known examples.
After all, how many citizens can name all the ongoing
investigations of Halliburton, Vice President Dick
Cheney's old firm? Who remembers that the
administration illicitly diverted $700 million from
Afghanistan to Iraq? Or that, on Capitol Hill, Senate
Republicans stole strategy memos from Democrats, while
a House Republican said he was offered a bribe during
a crucial vote? Even a conscientious citizen cannot be
expected to keep score, so Salon has compiled a list…

Christopher Wolf, Joe Wilson’s lawyer, in a Letter to
the Editor of the Washington Post: In their Jan. 12
op-ed column ["The Plame Game: Was This a Crime?"]
Victoria Toensing and Bruce W. Sanford misrepresented
the scope of the Intelligence Identities Protection
Act, which certainly does cover former covert agents
who remain at risk (along with their contacts) even
after their covert operations end…The Plame
investigation is not a "game." Reporters may need to
be protected, but calling for a halt to the
investigation into the leaking of Ms. Plame's identity
to Robert Novak is not the way to do that.

John O’Neill Wall of Heroes

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman,
www.commondreams.org: For the past couple of years,
he's been giving 40 or so speeches a year, mostly in
the red zone, mostly to conservative groups.
He speaks about the corporate attack on the country.
"There is no difference between the reaction I get
from Republicans and Democrats, because Americans
share the same values," Kennedy told us. "If you talk
about these issues in terms of our national values,
everybody understands it."
In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist
country and that the Bush White House has learned key
lessons from the Nazis.
"While communism is the control of business by
government, fascism is the control of government by
business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary
defines fascism as 'a system of government that
exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business
leadership together with belligerent nationalism.'
Sound familiar?"
He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring:
"It is always simply a matter to drag the people
along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist
dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to
do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce
the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing
the country to danger. It works the same in any
country."
Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly
grasped the lesson."
Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that
"fascism should more appropriately be called
corporatism because it is the merger of state and
corporate power."
"The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate
power," Kennedy told us. "There is vogue in the White
House to talk about the threat of big government. But
since the beginning of our national history, our most
visionary political leaders have warned the American
public against the domination of government by
corporate power. That warning is missing in the
national debate right now. Because so much corporate
money is going into politics, the Democratic Party
itself has dropped the ball. They just quash
discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive
corporate power on American democracy."

www.commondreams.org: An unprecedented group of
national security whistleblowers and family members of
9/11 victims’ families will gather Wednesday, January
26th to demand that the government halt its
detrimental practice of silencing employees who expose
national security blunders.
The event comes as several 9/11 family member advocacy
groups and public interest organizations file a
friend-of-the-court brief in support of Sibel Edmonds’
case against the government.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist
hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002
after repeatedly reporting serious security breaches
and misconduct in the agency’s translation program.
She challenged her retaliatory dismissal by filing
suit in federal court. Last July, the district court
dismissed her case when Attorney General John Ashcroft
invoked the so-called state secrets privilege. The
ACLU is representing Edmonds in the appeal.

Movement for Active Democracy in Iceland: We, citizens
of Iceland, protest in the strongest possible terms
against the Icelandic authorities’ support for the
invasion of Iraq by the United States of America and
the “coalition of the willing” in March 2003. With
their declaration of support, the Icelandic
authorities violated Icelandic law,
international law – and Icelandic democratic
tradition.
The decision to support the invasion was made
unilaterally by the Prime
Minister and Foreign Minister of Iceland, without
prior discussion by
Iceland’s Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs.
This is mandatory
under Icelandic law, which says that all major foreign
policy issues shall be
discussed by the committee. This decision has not been
debated, much less approved, either by the parliament
or by the Government of Iceland.

Theft of the 2004 Election
Rep. Conyers' Letter to Exit Polling Firms: "The
stakes for our democracy are simply too high for us to
allow this matter to pass without a serious and
substantive review of the exit poll data."
BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
January 20, 2005
Warren Mitofsky
Mitofsky International
1776 Broadway - Suite 1708
New York, NY 10019
Larry Rosin
President
Edison Media Research
6 W. Cliff St.
Somerville, NJ 08876
Dear Mr. Mitofsky and Mr. Rosin:
I have reviewed the internal report you issued
yesterday concerning your exit polling in the 2004
election, and, unfortunately, it has not caused my
concerns and questions regarding the significant
discrepancies between your polling data and the final
electoral results to diminish.
In particular, I would note that there are a number of
concerns with the explanations you posited in your
internal report that do not credibly account for the
unprecedented five point differential between your
exit polls and the reported results. As I am sure you
know, Professor Steven Freeman of the University of
Pennsylvania has determined that such a differential
was of a less than 1 in a 1000 likelihood - virtually
impossible as a statistical matter.
To be frank, blaming such factors as distant
restrictions on polling places, weather conditions,
the age of exit poll workers, and the fact that
multiple precincts were contained at the same polling
place, as your report does, does not come close to
explaining why the exit polls overstated support for
the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 26 states and support for
the Bush/Cheney ticket in only 4 states. Many of the
factors you point to appear to merely be random
characteristics of the election and your exit polling,
rather than quantifiable and justifiable explanations.
Nor can I believe that the massive discrepancies can
credibly be written off to eagerness of Kerry voters
to participate in the exit polls.The stakes for our
democracy are simply too high for us to allow this
matter to pass without a serious and substantive
review of the exit poll data. While the election is
over, there is significant bipartisan sentiment in
Congress and around the nation for voting reform. A
complete and full release of the exit poll information
will therefore not only help to resolve lingering
doubts regarding irregularities in the 2004 election,
it will also go a long way towards helping Congress
understand how to best craft these reforms. I am
hopeful that the media companies that contract for
your services will also understand and support the
importance of providing full, complete, and
transparent information in this matter.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
Ranking Member
House Judiciary Committee
cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.
Chairman, House Judiciary Committee < petro.wpd>> <>
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/01/ale05019.html
Exit Pollsters LIE About Kerry's Victory
by Bob Fertik on 01/19/2005 11:50pm. - revised
01/20/2005 10:15pm
Since Election Night, I've been angry over the refusal
of the NEP and the networks to explain the Exit Polls
that proved Kerry won Ohio, Florida, and the
Presidency.
After all, the Ukrainian election was overturned
because exit polls showed Yuschenko won, even though
the government-controlled tabulations showed he lost.
Well, we finally got an "explanation" - and it's
utterly bogus. Here's the CNN version:
Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Posted: 12:17 PM EST
Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote
on November 2, both nationally and in many states,
because more Kerry supporters participated in the
survey than Bush voters, according to an internal
review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.
This is a complicated sentence, so let's make it
simpler.
What if more Kerry supporters participated in the
survey because there were more Kerry supporters?
In other words, what if Kerry actually got more votes
- just as Gore did?
If that statement isn't true, then the only other
explanation is that Bush voters refused to take the
exit poll.
That sounds nutty. What serious explanation can they
offer?
Well, they can't offer one.
The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely
why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to
participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters.
"There were certainly motivational factors that are
impossible to quantify," the report said.
Why should we believe this media-spun "conspiracy
theory" about mysterious "motivatational factors" -
rather than believe the exit poll was accurate, and
Kerry won?
Here are the possible explanations, all of which are
ludicrous. I'll add BradBlog's brilliant translations
in bold.
The report identified several factors that may have
contributed to the discrepancy, including:
• Distance restrictions from polling places imposed
upon the interviewers by election officials at the
state and local level. {ed. note: Bush voters shot
straight up out of the polling place and down into
their car, unlike Kerry voters who walked by the
pollsters as they crossed the long distance from the
poll to their cars}
• Weather conditions, which lowered completion rates
at certain polling locations. {ed. note: It rained
more on the top of Bush voters heads than on the top
of Kerry voters at the same polling locations.}
• Multiple precincts voting at the same location as
the precinct in the exit poll sample. {ed. note: We
have no clue what this would have to do with anything,
and can't come up with a joke to make it more absurd
than it already sounds.}
• Interviewer characteristics, such as age, which were
more often related to the errors last year than in
past elections. {ed. note: Bush voters don't like
talking to younger people. Or, they don't like talking
to older people. Whereas Kerry voters, not that there
were more of them, will talk to anybody. Or they're
making all this bullshit up outta whole cloth.}
The bottom line is simple: they are lying to us.
Clearly the exit polls proved John Kerry won.
George Bush stole a second term with the help of the
TV networks, who will use the inauguration to proclaim
Bush legitimate.
Bullshit.
Impeach Bush Now!
Updates:
Here is the full 77-page report from Edison-Mitofsky
(the pollsters) for the National Election Pool (the
networks who paid them).
Rep. John Conyers didn't buy the bullshit either. In a
letter to exit pollsters Warren Mitofsky and Larry
Rosin, he wrote:
To be frank, blaming such factors as distant
restrictions on polling places, weather conditions,
the age of exit poll workers, and the fact that
multiple precincts were contained at the same polling
place, as your report does, does not come close to
explaining why the exit polls overstated support for
the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 26 states and support for
the Bush/Cheney ticket in only 4 states. Many of the
factors you point to appear to merely be random
characteristics of the election and your exit polling,
rather than quantifiable and justifiable explanations.
Nor can I believe that the massive discrepancies can
credibly be written off to eagerness of Kerry voters
to participate in the exit polls.
As a result, I would like to reiterate my request to
receive the actual raw exit poll data that you
obtained. I would also like to obtain copies of all
internal deliberations, memos and other materials of
your employees and consultants concerning or seeking
to explain the discrepancies.
You GO, Conyers!
The AP version by Seth Sutel has a simple conspiracy
theory: blame the children.
Younger interviewers often get lower response rates
from exit polls, Lenski said, but what was different
this time around was that that factor resulted in data
overstating the results for one candidate.
"You look at the factors out there, and young voters
in this election were the strongest supporters of
Kerry by age group," he said. "Older voters seeing a
younger interviewer may have been less likely to
participate because they might believe that
interviewer might not agree with them politically."
Edison/Mitofsky used a far greater proportion of
younger interviewers than VNS [its failed predecessor,
which was run by the same people] did, despite
considerable research from past elections documenting
"age-of-interviewer effects."
So were the interviewers too young in Ukraine? Why
should we believe any exit poll if such bizarre and
minor factors can produce results that are
statistically impossible - 250 million to one!
Here is Nightline's promo for their 1/19/05 show:
In this very partisan atmosphere, it may not surprise
you to hear that there are some people out there who
believe the winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential race
was John Kerry — that he should be the focus of the
extravagant inaugural parade that will make its way up
Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House tomorrow. These
very vocal critics believe that because of voting
irregularities in Ohio on Election Day, George Bush
actually lost the election. Some go even further to
say that the Republicans conspired to steal it.
Yup!
Here is Ohio activist Paddy Schaffer's report.
Nightline has officially labeled us the "Diehards."
I'd call us the "Truthtellers."
Warren Mitofsky went on ABC's Nightline show tonight
to claim that Bush won because he made errors in his
exit polls. He felt honored that the group Ted Koppel
referred to as "The Diehards" thought his work was so
correct that we would base our court suits on his
polls. He said he makes errors. Well, gee, I hope he
has trouble getting paying work in the future. Who
would want to pay for his polls when he admits he
botched the job on the Ohio exit polls.
The show also had lots of coverage of the Freedom
Winter bus riders, attorneys, and others that were
present in DC for the Press Conference at the National
Press Club... Finally the footage comes out, and we
make a lot of sense. The conclusion of the show is
that we are The Diehards, they want us to go away and
go back to sleep, and they even talked about lots of
other stolen elections and that we should just be sad
and nearly cry like Hubert Humphrey. It is so good to
know that I for one will not do that. And neither will
so many of you.
Instead, on Wednesday I spoke about our election
issues to two National Public Radio Hosts at the
Fawcett Center, their staffs, and a large audience.
After the live NPR radio show they hosted a banquet
room question and answer session with Neal Conan and
Fred Anderly. Although they did not call on the
several people in the audience that showed up with
elections issues to address during the live show, I
did get to speak then.
I addressed the need of the people to have the media
cover the truth of what is happening, to cover the
lies of the politicians, and to cover the brave
politicians that speak the truth. I told them and the
audience that this applies not only to the war, the
economy, many areas of our lives, but that I was very
interested in how it effected our elections. I told
them about the first public hearing at the church, the
preplanning, and how we didn't know if no one would
show up, or thousands would show up. I lead them
through several public hearings, tons of evidence to
show there are problems, the fact that this research
and legal work has been volunteer work by people of
Ohio.... how the branches of government that should do
this work has done nothing...., and went to the scene
in the Senate Gallery where after working so hard,
with so many, on these issues.... I watched as our
Senators DeWine and Voinovich stood up and told the
nation that Ohio did not have even one problem, not
one. I asked that they, lead the media in showcasing
and honoring those that tell the truth, broadcast it,
and when they do not tell the truth, play it, hold
them responsible. The audience cheered and clapped,
more than half of them I'd say. Neil Conan made an
excuse for the liars.... that they believe what they
are saying. Alas............ the media doesn't get it,
half of the people do. Yet they all know, they all
heard it, they can't say they don't know about it.
Karen Holbrook (president of OSU) was in the audience,
as were most of the speakers from the live show. I had
many come up to me during and after the event to thank
me, to want to know more.... So I handed out copies of
the Freepress after talking with them. A few more know
what happened, the hosts know what happened in Ohio...
now what do they choose to do with the knowledge? We
shall see.
To hold the government and media accountable, to
embrace and demand the truth, sounds great to me. To
have speakers show up at meetings all over the city,
state, and country, to expose what has happened, and
what is currently happening seems like one more area
to focus on. So many in that room, didn't understand
before I spoke, and now they do, or are beginning to
understand. The truth is so powerful. Keep finding it
and telling it. What would Jesus do...? He'd tell the
truth!
Speaking of truthtellers, Prof. Steven Freeman
answered Russ Baker's libelous attack on Freeman's
incredible work on the "unexplained exit poll
discrepancy."
Baker dismisses my work based on an unnamed source
(why does he not name his source here?) who told him
"that it is 'all wrong.'" But the single shortcoming
identified – that my analysis is based on "'screen
shots' of raw numbers provided by CNN" – betrays a
complete ignorance of my analysis, of basic survey
research, and of the issues at hand. I did not use
"raw numbers," but rather the exit poll projections
provided by the National Election Pool (NEP) to its
media clients so that they could prepare their
coverage and write their articles. I used these data,
which were publicly available on election night, to
document the obvious fact of an unexplained
discrepancy between the exit poll projections and the
official count – a discrepancy still unexplained more
than two months later. I collected screen shots
because the National Election Pool (NEP) "corrected"
its numbers later on election night to conform to the
official count, leaving no public record of the
original projections.
Baker's work is normally excellent. But he blew this
one big time. Baker owes Freeman - and his readers -
an explanation and an apology. E-mail
russ@russbaker.com
http://blog.democrats.com/node/2719
Conyers' Letter to Ohio Attorney General: Sanctioning
of Lawyers Involved with Ohio Election Challenge is a
"selective and partisan misuse of your legal
authority."
BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
January 20, 2005
The Hon. Jim Petro
Attorney General
State of Ohio
State Office Tower
30 E. Broad St, 17th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Dear Attorney General Petro:
I write to express my concern regarding your recent
request to sanction those attorneys who brought a
legal challenge to last year's presidential election
in Ohio. In particular, I am concerned that by seeking
official censure and fines, you are engaged in a
selective and partisan misuse of your legal authority.
As eager as many disgruntled voters are to have a
court of law finally assess the merits of the
challenge actions, I have serious doubts about the
validity of the sanctions case your office is
pursuing.
As an initial matter, one would be hard pressed to see
how the legal challenges brought under the Ohio
election challenge statute were "frivolous." First
off, it is widely known that the Ohio presidential
election was literally riddled with irregularities and
improprieties, many of which are set forth in the 102
page report issued by the House Judiciary Committee
Democratic Staff. As a matter
of fact, the problems were so great that Congress was
forced to debate the first challenge to an entire
state's slate of electors since the federal Electoral
Count law was enacted in 1877. In short, there is more
than an abundant record raising serious, substantive
questions about the Ohio presidential election.
It is also noteworthy that the Ohio Secretary of State
intentionally delayed certifying the vote, thereby
insuring that the recount could not be completed by
the date the electoral college met on December 13. The
Ohio Secretary State also refused to respond to
numerous questions regarding the irregularities
submitted to him by several members of the House
Judiciary Committee, has refused to respond to a
single concern set forth in the Judiciary Report, and
also sought a protective order to avoid any discovery
related to the legal challenges. In short, Ohio
election officials have compounded public doubt
concerning the election by refusing to provide any
sort of accountability and acting in almost every
respect as if they have "something to hide."
Given this context, and to help assure the public that
you are not selectively pursuing sanctions in these
cases for partisan reasons, I would respectfully
request that you provide the House Judiciary Committee
and the public with an itemization of all sanctions
cases brought and considered by your office since
January, 2003. In addition, I would ask that you
provide to us and make public an itemization of cases
you have considered and pursued under Ohio's campaign
and election laws since January 2003. Finally, I would
like to receive a an estimate of the costs you would
expect to expend of Ohio taxpayer funds to pursue the
sanction case you are seeking against Mr. Fitrakis,
Susan Truitt, Cliff Arnebeck, and Peter Peckowsky.
If you believe the election challenge case should not
have been brought, I would suggest the more
appropriate course of actions may be revisiting the
law with the Ohio legislature, rather than pursuing
far-fetched sanction cases which on their face would
appear to be overtly partisan in nature.
I would appreciate it if you would respond to me
though my Judiciary Committee staff, Perry Apelbaum
and Ted Kalo, 2142 Rayburn House Office Building,
Washington, D.C. 20515 (tel. 202-225-6504, fax
202-225-4423) by no later than January 27. Thank you.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
Ranking Member
House Judiciary Committee
cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.
Chairman, House Committee on the Judiciary
Supreme Court, State of Ohio
Ohio Bar Association
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/05/01/ale05018.html
Complicity of the Corporatist News Media
A Televisual Fairyland
By George Monbiot
The Guardian U.K.
Tuesday 18 January 2005
The U.S. media is disciplined by corporate America
into promoting the Republican cause.
On Thursday, the fairy king of fairyland will be
recrowned. He was elected on a platform suspended in
midair by the power of imagination. He is the leader
of a band of men who walk through ghostly realms
unvisited by reality. And he remains the most powerful
person on earth.
How did this happen? How did a fantasy president
from a world of make believe come to govern a country
whose power was built on hard-headed materialism? To
find out, take a look at two squalid little stories
which have been concluded over the past 10 days.
The first involves the broadcaster CBS. In
September, its 60 Minutes programme ran an
investigation into how George Bush avoided the Vietnam
draft. It produced memos which appeared to show that
his squadron commander in the Texas National Guard had
been persuaded to "sugarcoat" his service record. The
programme's allegations were immediately and
convincingly refuted: Republicans were able to point
to evidence suggesting the memos had been faked. Last
week, following an inquiry into the programme, the
producer was sacked, and three CBS executives were
forced to resign.
The incident couldn't have been more helpful to
Bush. Though there is no question that he managed to
avoid serving in Vietnam, the collapse of CBS's story
suggested that all the allegations made about his war
record were false, and the issue dropped out of the
news. CBS was furiously denounced by the rightwing
pundits, with the result that between then and the
election, hardly any broadcaster dared to criticise
George Bush. Mary Mapes, the producer whom CBS fired,
was the network's most effective investigative
journalist: she was the person who helped bring the
Abu Ghraib photos to public attention. If the memos
were faked, the forger was either a moron or a very
smart operator.
It's true, of course, that CBS should have taken
more care. But I think it is safe to assume that if
the network had instead broadcast unsustainable
allegations about John Kerry, none of its executives
would now be looking for work. How many people have
lost their jobs, at CBS or anywhere else, for
repeating bogus stories released by the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth about Kerry's record in Vietnam?
How many were sacked for misreporting the Jessica
Lynch affair? Or for claiming that Saddam Hussein had
an active nuclear weapons programme in 2003? Or that
he was buying uranium from Niger, or using mobile
biological weapons labs, or had a hand in 9/11? How
many people were sacked, during Clinton's presidency,
for broadcasting outright lies about the Whitewater
affair? The answer, in all cases, is none.
You can say what you like in the US media, as long
as it helps a Republican president. But slip up once
while questioning him, and you will be torn to shreds.
Even the most grovelling affirmations of loyalty won't
help. The presenter of 60 Minutes, Dan Rather, is the
man who once told his audience" "George Bush is the
president, he makes the decisions and, you know, as
just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell
me where." CBS is owned by the conglomerate Viacom,
whose chairman told reporters: "We believe the
election of a Republican administration is better for
our company." But for Fox News and the shockjocks
syndicated by Clear Channel, Rather's faltering
attempt at investigative journalism is further
evidence of "a liberal media conspiracy".
This is not the first time something like this has
happened. In 1998, CNN made a programme which claimed
that, during the Vietnam war, US special forces
dropped sarin gas on defectors who had fled to Laos.
In this case, there was plenty of evidence to support
the story. But after four weeks of furious
denunciations, the network's owner, Ted Turner,
publicly apologised in terms you would expect to hear
during a show trial in North Korea: "I'll take my
shirt off and beat myself bloody on the back." CNN had
erred, he said, by broadcasting the allegations when
"we didn't have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt".
As the website wsws.org has pointed out, it's hard to
think of a single investigative story - Watergate, the
My Lai massacre, Britain's arms to Iraq scandal -
which could have been proved at the time by
journalists "beyond a reasonable doubt". But Turner
did what was demanded of him, with the result that, in
media fairyland, the atrocity is now deemed not to
have happened.
The other squalid little story broke three days
before the CBS people were sacked. A US newspaper
discovered that Armstrong Williams, a television
presenter who (among other jobs) had a weekly slot on
a syndicated TV show called America's Black Forum, had
secretly signed a $240,000 contract with the US
Department of Education. The contract required him "to
regularly comment" on George Bush's education bill
"during the course of his broadcasts" and to ensure
that "Secretary Paige [the education secretary] and
other department officials shall have the option of
appearing from time to time as studio guests".
It's hard to see why the administration bothered
to pay him. Williams has described as his "mentors"
Lee Atwater - the man who, under Reagan's presidency,
brought a new viciousness to Republican campaigning -
and the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond. His
broadcasting career has been dedicated to promoting
extreme Republican causes and attacking civil rights
campaigns.
What makes this story interesting is that the show
he worked on was founded, in 1977, by the radical
black activists Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, to "allow
black reporters to hold politicians and activists of
all persuasions accountable to black people". They
sold their shares in 1980, and the programme was later
bought by the Uniworld Group. With Williams's help,
the new owners have reversed its politics, and turned
it into a recruitment vehicle for the Republican
party. Williams appears to have been taking money for
doing what he was doing anyway.
These stories, in other words, are illustrations
of the ways in which the US media is disciplined by
corporate America. In the first case the other
corporate broadcasters joined forces to punish a
dissenter in their ranks. In the second case a
corporation captured what was once a dissenting
programme and turned it into another means of
engineering conformity.
The role of the media corporations in the US is
similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere:
they decide what the public will and won't be allowed
to hear, and either punish or recruit the social
deviants who insist on telling a different story. The
journalists they employ do what almost all journalists
working under repressive regimes do: they internalise
the demands of the censor, and understand, before
anyone has told them, what is permissible and what is
not.
So, when they are faced with a choice between a
fable which helps the Republicans, and a reality which
hurts them, they choose the fable. As their fantasies
accumulate, the story they tell about the world veers
further and further from reality. Anyone who tries to
bring the people back down to earth is denounced as a
traitor and a fantasist. And anyone who seeks to
become president must first learn to live in
fairyland. %