The Hollywood Liberal

Former, Current Alaska Lawmakers Charged

Newsday
Excerpt:
JUNEAU, Alaska — One current and two former Alaska legislators pleaded not guilty Friday to extortion — one man sought a plum job in the Barbados, prosecutors claim — and taking bribes to support legislation benefiting an oil services company.

Prosecutors allege the scheme unfolded as lawmakers weighed a new petroleum profits tax structure and a new contract for a natural gas pipeline last year.

Pete Kott, the former House speaker, explicitly said during a teleconference with company officials that he would support the pipeline and the company’s preferred version of the tax proposal if he was made warden of a prison the company was building in the Caribbean, according to the indictment.

“You’ll get your gas line, the governor gets his bill, and I’ll get my job in Barbados,” he told company executives, the indictment states…

Rep. Victor Kohring of Wasilla, Kott of Eagle River and Bruce Weyhrauch of Juneau, all Republicans, were arrested Friday.

Kott is accused of accepting $8,993 in payments, $2,750 in polling expenses and a future contract as a lobbyist in exchange for his support of the pipeline and a tax proposal that favored the company, according to court documents.

Kohring is accused of demanding and accepting up to $2,600 in cash and a $3,000 job for a relative from VECO executives in exchange for his support. The indictment also alleges Kohring sought but did not receive a $17,000 loan for credit card debt.

Weyhrauch is charged with helping advance the oil service company’s causes in exchange for the promise of legal work in the future for the company, the indictment said.

HL’s Take
What? Unethical Republicans who try to get rich at the publics expense??? Nooo it can’t be so.
Ooops busted again. Maybe the guy who wanted to be a Prison Warden (wow talk about aiming low) will now wind up where he belongs..On the other side of the bars with the criminals.

Study Finds Lapses in Battlefield Ethics

S. Florida Sun Sentinel
Excerpt
WASHINGTON — In a survey of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq, less than half of Marines and a little more than half of Army soldiers said they would report a member of their unit for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.

More than 40 percent support the idea of torture in some cases, and 10 percent reported personally abusing Iraqi civilians, the Pentagon said Friday in what it called its first ethics study of troops at the war front. Units exposed to the most combat were chosen for the study, officials said.

“It is disappointing,” said analyst John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank. “But anybody who is surprised by it doesn’t understand war. … This is about combat stress.”

The military has seen a number of high-profile incidents of alleged abuse in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the killings of 24 civilians by Marines, the rape and killing of a 14-year-old girl and the slaying of her family and the sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison….

_Only 47 percent of the soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect.

_About a third of troops said they had insulted or cursed at civilians in their presence.

_About 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating civilians or damaging property when it was not necessary. Mistreatment includes hitting or kicking a civilian.

HL’s Take
When soldiers are sent over there for 3 and 4 tours, then get there time extended, and seeing death all around them, of course they are going to start losing it. But, since the worst President ever insists in keeping the war going on forever, of course no one is going to sign up to go over there and fight for the lies. This leads to the soldiers that are over there abusing and killing innocent people, which makes the US look even worse to the rest of the world. Just one more way Bush is screwing it all up for everyone. When a soldier who has been over there way to long and finally snaps and kills an innocent civilian, you can blame that on Bush, the biggest mass murderer in modern times.

When the class war goes local

SF Gate
Excerpt
Our story begins in the Montana legislature, though it could be anywhere, as this lawmaking body is a microcosm of America’s ideological divides. Democrats pushed to boost education spending and give each resident homeowner a $400 property tax rebate. To fund the plan, they proposed closing tax loopholes and strengthening tax enforcement in a state where roughly half of all Fortune 500 companies doing business get away with paying less than $500 a year in taxes.

But such a move offends conservative politicians and the corporate lobbyists who crowd the hallways of state capitols like the one in Helena — and these types don’t take lightly to being offended

The GOP-controlled Montana House pressed a tax cut for corporations financed by spending cuts, including one eliminating all public-health programs. When last week it came time to negotiate a compromise, Republican class warriors dug in further, offering amendments to kill Democrats’ proposal to beef up corporate tax enforcement.

The result? The legislature ended without a budget, and Montana is now on the brink of its own version of the 1996 Gingrich-Clinton government shutdown. It is a troubling situation for middle-class Montanans, but for anti-government Republican politicians and lobbyists, it is a big victory in their war on the middle class.

Days later, Montana’s U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat, joined Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in headlining an economic-development summit in Butte, a devastated city that is one of America’s all-too-common casualties in this economic war. Once the bustling capital of the copper industry, Butte today is known for its salt-of-the-earth inhabitants and for its canyon-like Superfund site known as the Berkeley Pit — a defunct open-pit mine that the Anaconda Company abandoned with a pool of deadly chemicals at the bottom.

The captains of global finance attending this summit no doubt saw Butte’s boarded-up brick buildings and rusting mine shaft skeletons from the windows of their private jets that crowded the town’s airport. Yet, they delivered speeches as if they were attending an executive conference at a Caribbean resort.

HL’s Take
They won’t be happy until there is no middle class left. There will just be the ultra rich, like The Bush family, and about 5 percent of the population, the rest of us will be there virtual slaves. Working for much less money, with no health insurance, no worker safety protection, and no benefits whatsoever. Corporatization has already started the ball rolling on this trend. Are you better off then you were 6 years ago? I know I’m not. Personally I’m making less money then I was 7 years ago, and I was out of full time work for almost 3 years before I finally broke down and accepted my current job. It’s just going to get worse in the future. It’s going to be up to Democrats to get the middle class back on track, because the republicans (who get a great deal of there votes from the middle class voter that only cares about God, Gays and Guns and more War) are working toward the day when Jim Crow comes back.