Cover-up in OKC

Terry Nichols confession has opened the door to re-examine this event that now shows actions by certain government officials were paving the way to other crimes, including the WTC event, the removal of our constitutional rights, control of energy resources, and the institution of a permanent state of war with the world. The MO (modus operandi) becomes clear to all. Editors


by William F. Jasper
July 16, 2001


In trying to pin the blame for the bombing solely on despicable mass-murderer Timothy McVeigh, federal officials have ignored and covered up evidence of a wider conspiracy.

Readers of The New American are familiar with many of the charges leveled by Jannie Coverdale, Kathy Wilburn, Jane Graham, and others personally affected by the Oklahoma City bombing. The extensive investigation carried out by this magazine over the past six years has confirmed that their fears and charges of cover-up, coercion, deception, and obstruction are fully justified.*

Our investigation has led to several major conclusions that completely contradict the official government line, which holds that Timothy McVeigh masterminded and carried out the terrorist assault on the Murrah Building, with his only significant assistance coming from former Army buddy Terry Nichols. Those conclusions, more fully examined in the remainder of this article, are summarized in the following bullet points:

* Multiple Accomplices — Credible witnesses saw McVeigh with John Does in Junction City, Kansas, where the Ryder truck was rented, in the days before the bombing. Many additional credible witnesses saw McVeigh with one or more John Does in Oklahoma City on the morning of the bombing. Still more credible witnesses saw McVeigh with one or more John Does in or around the Murrah Building in the days before the bombing. In fact, the prosecution did not present any eye-witnesses in Oklahoma City who saw McVeigh alone on the day of the bombing; virtually every eyewitness saw him with one or more John Does. * Multiple Bombs — Physics, the available forensic evidence, official records, eyewitnesses, and an impressive array of world-class experts compellingly argue that the Ryder truck bomb could not have caused the terrible damage and deadly destruction of the federal building without the help of explosive charges placed on the columns of the building. This clearly put the bombing operation beyond McVeigh's level of technical expertise and necessitated two or more additional accomplices.

* Prior Knowledge — Documents from the ATF, FBI, and U.S. Marshal's Service, as well as witness testimony and the testimony of federal undercover informants, indicate that high officials in the federal government were given prior warning about the impending attack on the Murrah Federal Building.

* Misconduct, Coercion, and Cover-up — In an astonishing number of instances, vital evidence was ignored, suppressed, tampered with, and even destroyed. Witnesses were coached, harassed, and coerced in attempts to get them to change their testimony.

Making the "John Does" Disappear

Many credible witnesses reported seeing another individual with McVeigh strongly resembling the infamous sketch of John Doe #2. Among them, Vickie Beemer, who handled the rental transaction of the Ryder truck used in the bombing, informed the FBI of John Doe #2 only to have investigators claim that she had mistaken him for a different man.

Doe No. 2." The John Doe No. 1 sketch turned out to be a pretty close depiction of Timothy McVeigh, who was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman on a routine traffic stop as he fled north on the interstate highway after the bombing. John Doe No. 2, who for weeks was the "world's most wanted" fugitive, was never arrested.

Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI officials swore that "no stone will be left unturned" in the pursuit of this elusive suspect. Instead of turning over stones, however, the Department of Justice and FBI were soon burying evidence and leads. The DOJ-FBI sleuths soon concocted a cover story, still used by the media, that John Doe 2 was a product of faulty memory and mistaken identity. According to this story, the witnesses at the Ryder truck rental agency in Junction City, Kansas, had mistakenly fingered Army Private Todd Bunting, who had come in to rent a truck with Sergeant Michael Hertig the day after McVeigh, and who had no connection to the bombing.

There were many problems with this story.

For one, it conflicted, in many details, with the original accounts provided by the three Ryder witnesses to the FBI. Besides, Vickie Beemer, who handled the rental transaction, knew Sgt. Hertig and was not likely to confuse him with a stranger. What's more, she remained steadfast in her sworn testimony before the grand jury and the trial jury that she was "absolutely 100% certain" that the "Robert Kling" who rented the Ryder truck used in the bombing (whom the government says was McVeigh) was accompanied by another individual.

Another major problem with the government theory is that even if the Ryder witness mix-up story were true, there are still many additional eyewitnesses who saw McVeigh with a man resembling the John Doe 2 sketch. And still more witnesses also saw McVeigh with several other individuals immediately before the bombing. In any criminal case — and especially in one this important, involving the "most deadly terrorist attack on U.S. soil" — the prosecution normally desires to use eyewitnesses who can establish the connection of the accused directly to the crime, and particularly to the crime scene.

Prior to the McVeigh trial, the prosecution filed a list of 327 witnesses with the court. Only 141 were called. Very few were eyewitnesses, and none placed McVeigh in Oklahoma City. There were many witnesses who could have placed him there. Why were they not called?

One of the eyewitnesses never called was Mike Moroz, who worked at a tire store several blocks from the Murrah Building. Moroz picked McVeigh out of the FBI lineup, providing identification that led to McVeigh's arraignment. According to Moroz and his co-worker, Brian Marshall, McVeigh pulled the Ryder truck into the tire shop's parking lot around 8:40 a.m., about 20 minutes before the explosion. Moroz spoke briefly to McVeigh, who was driving, and also saw a passenger in the truck with McVeigh.

About five minutes later, McVeigh stopped his truck in front of the Regency Towers, one block west of the Murrah Building, and purchased two sodas and a package of cigarettes from Danny Wilkerson, who ran the Towers' convenience store. The truck was caught on the Regency surveillance tape. Wilkerson stated that a male passenger accompanied McVeigh. This remained his death-bed testimony, when he died of cancer in 1998.

Around 8:58 a.m., about five minutes before the explosion, Rodney Johnson, a paramedic, was driving in front of the Murrah Building when he was forced to brake for two men walking from the direction of the Murrah Building to the parking lot across the street, where another witness saw McVeigh and a John Doe get into McVeigh's Mercury Marquis and hurriedly drive away. Rodney Johnson notified the FBI that night, and his description of the two suspects closely matched McVeigh and John Doe No. 2 — before the FBI sketches were made public.

Many other important eyewitnesses saw McVeigh in or near the Murrah Building with one or more John Does, including:

• Kyle Hunt, a Tulsa banker;
• Morris John Kuper, an employee of the nearby Kerr-McGee Oil Company;
• Debbie Nakanashi, a U.S. Postal Service employee;
• Dr. Paul Heath, a public affairs officer with the Veterans Administration;
• Danielle Hunt, the former operator of the Murrah Building daycare center;
• Priscilla Salyer, an employee of the U.S. Customs Service; and
• Germaine Johnson, a HUD branch chief.

Other eyewitnesses who saw Timothy McVeigh with John Does in the Junction City, Kansas area, where he stayed before driving to Oklahoma City, or who saw John Does in McVeigh's motel room, include:

• Jeff Davis, who delivered Chinese food to McVeigh's motel room;
• Hilda Sostre, a maid at the Dreamland Motel where McVeigh stayed;
• Joan Van Buren, a Subway sandwich clerk;
• Donald and Connie Hood, visitors at the Dreamland Motel; and
• Barbara Whittenberg, owner of the Santa Fe Trail Diner.

How compelling is the cumulative eyewitness testimony?

According to John Douglas, the FBI's legendary criminal personality profile expert, it is very compelling.

Mr. Douglas, the author of the nonfiction bestsellers Mind Hunter and Journey Into Darkness, is a 25-year veteran with the FBI and a consultant to law enforcement agencies nationwide. He was interviewed for the September 3, 1996 broadcast of NBC's Dateline segment on the bombing investigation.

Douglas stated that based upon his personality profiles of McVeigh and Nichols, as well as practical considerations involved in building and delivering the truck bomb and the compelling testimony of so many witnesses with no apparent motive for lying, he is convinced there must be other co-conspirators.

According to Douglas: "I believe there has to be someone who looks like the sketch because there are too many people who have looked at the sketch and said 'that's who I saw on or about that day.'"

John Douglas suggested that "the FBI may be in trouble here. There are other people involved in this and they'd better find them. I don't know what happened precisely, but I do know the criminal personality. But when I look at Nichols and I look at McVeigh — these two people are solely and exclusively responsible for this type of crime? I doubt it."

Later, in 1997, when this writer discussed the Oklahoma City bombing case with Douglas, the famed consultant and crime fighter stated that additional evidence and witnesses had made his earlier opinion even stronger. "I think the government's position, in light of all the evidence to the contrary, is absurd," he said.

Science Is Silenced

Almost before the dust had cleared from the explosion, the official government line was that the attack on the Murrah Building had involved only a truck bomb, composed of ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) and parked on the street next to the building.

From that point on, the government story on the size and composition of the bomb mutated several times to fit the official line.

As the McVeigh trial was about to start, the Department of Justice issued a report by the Office of the Inspector General that particularly censured the work of Special Agent David Williams of the FBI lab explosives unit, and Williams' supervisor, Thomas Thurman.

Williams, the main explosives analyst for the prosecution in this case, had grossly fudged evidence on all of the major points:

• The size and composition of the truck bomb;
• The velocity of the explosives; the type of detonator used;
• The containers that supposedly were used;
• The presence of explosive residue on clothing and other articles belonging to Timothy McVeigh.

The Inspector General's critique found that Williams' forensic report was flawed, unscientific, biased, improper, unjustified, invalid, and appeared "to tailor the opinion to evidence associated with the defendants."

Long before this, however, many genuine experts had already concluded that it would have been physically impossible for the truck bomb alone to have accomplished the massive structural destruction of the heavy concrete, steel-reinforced columns.

The evidence pointed overwhelmingly, they insisted, to the detonation of high-explosive contact charges on the columns inside the building.

This stellar group of experts includes legendary physicist and defense analyst Sam Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb;

• Brigadier General Benton K. Partin, former director of the Air Force Armaments Technology Laboratory;
• Dr. Frederick Hansen, professor of physics at the University of Oregon, former research scientist with NASA, and former head of earth and astro sciences at the General Motors Defense Research Laboratories;
• Dr. Ernest B. Paxson, an engineer with over 30 years' experience in civilian and defense-related projects and a published author in many professional journals;
• Dr. Robert G. Breene, author, former professor of physics, and formerly a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

In addition to the authoritative assessments of these and other experts, there is the equally compelling testimony provided by eyewitnesses; official police, military, and fire department logs; and television video coverage showing that there were additional internal charges within the Murrah Building that failed to detonate and that were later removed by bomb squads. (See, "Proof of Multiple Bombs," in our issue for July 20, 1998.)

This matter could have been settled with finality if an independent, technically competent analysis of the crime scene and the forensic evidence — especially from the concrete columns — had been allowed.

But, incredibly, one month after the bombing, before such an evaluation could be made, the crime scene and evidence were destroyed, as the building was imploded by commercial demolition blasters. (Doesn't all this sound strangely familiar?)

Then the massive evidence of the crime scene was hauled away and buried.

This happened at the very time that heated arguments in the O.J. Simpson trial, "the trial of the century," centered on charges that the Los Angeles Police Department had failed to preserve the crime scene and other important evidence in that case.

It is elementary doctrine and procedure to preserve the crime scene and preserve evidence; why in this, of all cases, was there such a rush to destroy the evidence?

Prior Warning

On the morning of April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the federal assault on the Branch Davidian church complex in Waco, the ATF office at the Murrah Building was all but abandoned.

Had they been warned of a possible attack?

Compelling evidence led many survivors to begin asking questions about this. Bruce Shaw rushed to the building immediately after the blast to try to find his wife, an employee with the Federal Credit Union. In an interview with this reporter, and in sworn affidavits, Shaw said he was informed by an ATF agent at the scene that the ATF staff had been warned on their pagers not to come in.

Two paramedics at the scene, in separate incidents, also reported hearing similar statements from ATF agents. The paramedics, Katherine Mallette and Tiffany Bible, have provided sworn affidavits of their testimony.

The ATF responded immediately, claiming "malicious rumors" of prior ATF warning "are entirely false."

The ATF rushed to cover the fact that only two, three, or five (depending on which account one takes) of the agency's 17 employees were in the office that morning. ATF spokesman Lester Martz presented an apocryphal tale of ATF heroism to counter the mounting concern, claiming that Agent Alex McCauley was in an elevator with a DEA agent when the bomb exploded. "The elevator dropped in a free fall from the eighth floor to the third," said Martz. "The two men were trapped in the smoke-filled elevator.... On their fourth attempt, they managed to break through the doors and escape from the elevator. The agents made their way to the stairwell and brought with them 10 or 15 people they found along the way...."

This ludicrous scenario soon proved to be a lie, and an embarrassment to the ATF.

The New American interviewed Oscar Johnson, the president of Midwestern Elevator, and his technicians who were at the Murrah Building minutes after the blast. They certified that "none of the elevators fell," and that "all of the elevators' cables were intact."

They presented photographs and their official reports to back up their assertions. Johnson and other elevator experts we consulted assured us that although the elevator free fall is a staple of Hollywood action films, "it is not something that happens in real life." Moreover, as Johnson pointed out, if a free fall of five stories had occurred, those inside would have suffered severe injuries. (See "Prior Knowledge," in our issue for December 11, 1995.)

At least two undercover federal informants repeatedly warned federal authorities weeks in advance of the April 19, 1995 attack of specific plots to blow up federal buildings: Carol Howe, an ATF informant in "Elohim City," a rural enclave providing refuge to violent criminals and members of the Aryan Republican Army, the Ku Klux Klan, and Aryan Nation; and Cary Gagan, an informant for the U.S. Justice Department amongst a group of narco-terrorists operating through Mexico that included foreign nationals of Middle Eastern extraction, as well as domestic Caucasian-Americans. Both Howe and Gagan had formal, written agreements with federal authorities, and both provided substantial documentary evidence to back up their claims that they had provided ample warning to their federal superiors to have foreseen and prevented the devastating attack. (See "Undercover: The Howe Revelations" in our September 15, 1997 issue, and "Fighting for Answers in OKC" in our issue for August 4, 1997.)

Obstructing Justice

We have already mentioned the incredible destruction of the Murrah Building crime scene and the Inspector General's report on the fraudulent FBI analysis of the truck bomb. Decorated FBI scientist Dr. Frederick Whitehurst has charged that the abuses at the FBI Crime Labs are serious, conscious, and systemic. Senator Charles Grassley was far more critical than the IG report, suggesting that criminal charges against FBI agents may be in order.

Title 18 USCS 1512 provides criminal penalties for intimidation, physical force or misleading conduct directed at a witness. Other sections of the code provide additional penalties for other forms of conduct aimed at falsifying, misrepresenting, or improperly influencing a witness.

Penalties would seem to be in order with regard to FBI and DOJ treatment of many OKC witnesses, including: Jeffrey Davis; Danny Wilkerson; Debbie Burdick; Jane Graham; Arlene Blanchard; Morris John Kuper; Paul Heath; David Kochendorfer; James Miller; Kimberly Tolson; Russell Stuart Green; Lana Padilla; Barbara Whittenberg; Eldon Elliot; Vickie Beemer; and Tom Kessinger.

As important as the sins of commission in the OKC bombing case are, it may prove that the FBI's and DOJ's sins of omission are even greater.

Following the Nichols trial, Kathy Wilburn made an issue of the fact that the FBI had only checked the more than 1,000 fingerprints in the case against a very small number of suspects (12), many of whom were members of the Nichols family (including two-year-old Nicole Nichols).

They had, however, refused to run checks on prime suspects such as Andreas Strassmeir, Dennis Mahon, Michael Brescia, Tony and Peter Ward, Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe, Mark Thomas, and others. Wilburn said FBI Agent John Hersley told her that they would run the prints later. The Justice Department, though, has announced that there is no on-going investigation and "no evidence" of other suspects in the case.

* See http://www.thenewamerican.com/focus/okc for access to the text of more than 30 trail-blazing, investigative articles on the OKC bombing).

Source:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_3179.shtm
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Comment on Nichols Confession


It is now even more clear that the Federal government engineered the Murrah bombing for increased funding, and to incite congress to pass the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995.

The Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995 was stalled in committee until the bombing took place.

Then it went through on a "fast track".

We already knew that federal undercover informants, indicated that high officials in the federal government were given prior warning about the impending attack on the Murrah Federal Building.

We already knew that accomplice "John Doe 2" disappeared, and seemed to be on the "most UNwanted by the FBI list".

Now Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says that a high-ranking FBI official "apparently" was directing Timothy McVeigh in the plot to blow up a government building...

The declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols was filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City. The declaration was a part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother Ken Trentadue.

Ken Trentadue died in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Attorney JesseTrentadue claims that his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents. The family was told that this death was a suicide by hanging, although the body was found to have numerous injuries over nearly all areas.

Oklahoma Bombing Affidavits revealed some interesting facts:

NO ATF agents were in the building, when it blew up.

EIGHT ATF agents, in clean black jump suits, were there within a twenty minutes after the bombing.

Even if the entire group was "late for work", how could all EIGHT have shown up so quickly in the same clean uniforms? --UNLESS THEY KNEW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Terrorism provides the EXCUSE FOR TYRANNY.

Note that the Attorney General, John Ashcorft, stopped any interviews of McVeigh ostensibly to keep him from "profiting" from his criminal act, or at least that is what Ashcroft said at a TV conference.

Could it be that someone in the government did not actually want McVeigh to talk?

Obviously, McVeigh could NOT profit from his crime. He died, even if he could profit from his crime, the government could have taken that profit away from him.

This confession from Nichols opens a time in history that should be examined in detail. Lets hope that the truth about this is revealed and brought to light.

More to follow.

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Nichols says OK Bombing was FBI op

Detailed confession filed in Salt Lake City about Oklahoma City Bombing


By Geoffrey Fattah
Deseret Morning News


The only surviving convicted criminal in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is saying his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, told him he was taking orders from a top FBI official in orchestrating the bombing.

A declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, has proven to be one of the most detailed confessions by Nichols to date about his involvement in the bombing as well as the involvement of others. However, one congressman who has investigated the bombings remains skeptical of Nichols' claims.

The declaration was filed as part of Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue's pending wrongful death suit against the government for the death of his brother in a federal corrections facility in Oklahoma City. Trentadue claims his brother was killed during an interrogation by FBI agents when agents mistook his brother for a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.

The most shocking allegation in the 19-page signed declaration is Nichols' assertion that the whole bombing plot was an FBI operation and that McVeigh let slip during a bout of anger that he was taking instruction from former FBI official Larry Potts.

Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers.

Potts retired from the FBI under intense pressure and criticism for the cover-up of an order to allow agents to shoot anyone seen leaving the Weaver cabin at Ruby Ridge.

When contacted, the FBI's main office in Washington, D.C., said it could not provide immediate comment on Nichols' claims Tuesday.

Nichols claims that, in December 1992, McVeigh told him that "while he was serving in the U.S. Army, he had been recruited to carry out undercover missions."

In the next few years, the two men hatched the bombing plot. In October 1994, "McVeigh and I stole explosives from a quarry in Marion, Kansas consisting of 8 1/2 cases or boxes containing 229 (2-inch by 16-inch) sticks of the gel type explosive known as Tovex," Nichols wrote, adding that only a small amount was used in the actual bombing.

It was while traveling the gun-show circuit that Nichols claims the two obtained bombmaking knowledge and the materials used in the bombing. One example is that McVeigh allegedly attended a gun show in Knob Creek, Ky., in 1993.

"At this gun show, McVeigh had the opportunity to make contact with about 20 people who were bomb experts. McVeigh told me that he himself had no knowledge about how to construct a bomb, but that he always wanted to gain more knowledge about how to construct bombs," Nichols stated.

Nichols says he knew McVeigh was building the bomb, and in November 1994 he left for the Philippines to get away from the area to avoid being implicated.

"I did not want to be present when and if McVeigh did explode a bomb. Consequently, I left for the Philippines to be out of the country," he wrote.

That statement contradicts findings of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, whose study on the bombing was made public last December. It indicated Nichols had traveled to the Philippines to receive bombing training by a possible foreign terrorist.

Having not heard of any bombing, Nichols said he returned to the U.S. in January 1995. It was later that, in a fit of rage, McVeigh mentioned Potts' name, Nichols wrote.

"McVeigh said he believed Potts was manipulating him and forcing him to 'go off script,' which I understood meant to change the target of the bombing," Nichols stated.

It wasn't until April 18, 1995, that Nichols said he helped McVeigh construct a bomb at Geary Lake. The bomb was comprised of "metal and white plastic" barrels which were filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and mixed with nitromethane. In all he estimates between 90 to 92 fifty-pound bags of fertilizer went into the barrels and explosive sticks were placed in the holes of each barrel.

Nichols said he had no further role in renting the Ryder truck and claims he did not know the target, only that McVeigh "wanted to make a statement" by "targeting some structure."

After hearing about the bombing of the federal building, which killed 168 adults and children, Nichols said he panicked when his name came up on the radio and he wanted to turn himself in — but not before hiding evidence, including explosives used in the bombing.

The claims made in the declaration have added yet more twists to the mystery surrounding the bombings. Some familiar with the bombing's history say Nichols' claims seem to indicate the FBI put McVeigh up to the plot as a draw for radicals, but that the situation got out of control and McVeigh became a runaway informant.

After reviewing the declaration, Rohrabacher told the Deseret Morning News that Nichols' claims should be investigated but treated with extreme skepticism.

"I need to caution people to remember that Terry Nichols is a mass murderer," Rohrabacher said. "But if Terry Nichols is beginning to reveal some of the information that's been kept from the public, I'd be very happy about that."

Rohrabacher also expressed disappointment with the FBI and the Department of Justice for not adequately following up on indications there were others who helped Nichols and McVeigh.

The congressman said he no longer is chairman of the subcommittee that conducted the investigation and is "dismayed" that no one else in Congress seems interested in the matter.

Nichols said he has much more information, which he offered to former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004, but is willing to divulge only under sworn video deposition.

Trentadue said he plans to seek that deposition of Nichols, but "I expect one hell of a fight with the Department of Justice."

Nichols is serving life in prison without parole after being convicted by a jury for his role in the bombing. McVeigh also was convicted and on June 11, 2001 was executed in Terre Haute, Ind.

[I am working on obtaining Nichols confession to post, Editor]

[This confession doesn't cleanly dovetail with other information that was reported at the time, one instance that law enforcement was training in the building that day on a bomb exercise (false flag), that other explosions were heard from within the building, seismic recordings verify this (similar reports on WTC), that media was kept at a distance and given early pat answers to the event, the 'other' suspects sketch who was never caught looked oddly like Jose Padilla, etc. But one thing (MO) comes across with this story as with other FBI related stories is that they may have had a hand in the OP, directing from afar, manipulating, misdirecting, blackmailing, planting evidence, etc.. Editor]

Sources:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_5271117
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660197443,00.html
http://www.kten.com/Global/story.asp?S=6125418
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"Monetary Policy and the State of the Economy"


Thursday, February 15, 2007
By U.S. Rep. Ron Paul


Transparency in monetary policy is a goal we should all support. I've often wondered why Congress so willingly has given up its prerogative over monetary policy. Astonishingly, Congress in essence has ceded total control over the value of our money to a secretive central bank.

Congress created the Federal Reserve, yet it had no constitutional authority to do so. We forget that those powers not explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution are inherently denied to Congress -- and thus the authority to establish a central bank never was given. Of course Jefferson and Hamilton had that debate early on, a debate seemingly settled in 1913.

But transparency and oversight are something else, and they're worth considering. Congress, although not by law, essentially has given up all its oversight responsibility over the Federal Reserve. There are no true audits, and Congress knows nothing of the conversations, plans, and actions taken in concert with other central banks. We get less and less information regarding the money supply each year, especially now that M3 is no longer reported.

The role the Fed plays in the president's secretive Working Group on Financial Markets goes unnoticed by members of Congress. The Federal Reserve shows no willingness to inform Congress voluntarily about how often the Working Group meets, what actions it takes that affect the financial markets, or why it takes those actions.

But these actions, directed by the Federal Reserve, alter the purchasing power of our money. And that purchasing power is always reduced. The dollar today is worth only 4 cents compared to the dollar in 1913, when the Federal Reserve started. This has profound consequences for our economy and our political stability.

All paper currencies are vulnerable to collapse, and history is replete with examples of great suffering caused by such collapses, especially to a nation's poor and middle class. This leads to political turmoil.

Even before a currency collapse occurs, the damage done by a fiat system is significant. Our monetary system insidiously transfers wealth from the poor and middle class to the privileged rich. Wages never keep up with the profits of Wall Street and the banks, thus sowing the seeds of class discontent. When economic trouble hits, free markets and free trade often are blamed, while the harmful effects of a fiat monetary system are ignored. We deceive ourselves that all is well with the economy, and we ignore the fundamental flaws that are a source of growing discontent among those who have not shared in the abundance of recent years.

Few understand that our consumption and apparent wealth are dependent on a current account deficit of $800 billion per year. This deficit shows that much of our prosperity is based on borrowing rather than a true increase in production. Statistics show year after year that our productive manufacturing jobs continue to go overseas. This phenomenon is not seen as a consequence of the international fiat monetary system, where the United States government benefits as the issuer of the world's reserve currency.

Government officials consistently claim that inflation is in check at barely 2 percent, but middle-class Americans know that their purchasing power -- especially when it comes to housing, energy, medical care, and school tuition -- is shrinking much faster than 2 percent each year.

Even if prices were held in check, in spite of our monetary inflation, concentrating on CPI distracts from the real issue. We must address the important consequences of Fed manipulation of interest rates. When interests rates are artificially low, below market rates, insidious malinvestment and excessive indebtedness inevitably bring about the economic downturn that everyone dreads.

We look at gross domestic product numbers to reassure ourselves that all is well, yet a growing number of Americans still does not enjoy the higher standard of living that monetary inflation brings to the privileged few. Those few have access to the newly created money first, before its value is diluted.

For example: Before the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, corporate chief executive income was about 30 times the average worker's pay. Today it's closer to 500 times. It's hard to explain this simply by market forces and increases in productivity. One Wall Street firm last year gave out bonuses totaling $16.5 billion. There's little evidence that this represents free-market capitalism.

In 2006 dollars, the minimum wage was $9.50 before the 1971 breakdown of Bretton Woods. Today that wage is worth $5.15. Congress congratulates itself for raising the minimum wage by mandate, but in reality it has lowered the minimum wage by allowing the Fed to devalue the dollar. We must consider how the growing inequalities created by our monetary system will lead to social discord.

GDP purportedly is now growing at 3.5 percent, and everyone seems pleased. What we fail to understand is how much government entitlement spending contributes to the increase in the GDP. Rebuilding infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes, which simply gets us back to even, is considered part of GDP growth. Wall Street profits and salaries, pumped up by the Fed's increase in money, also contribute to GDP statistical growth. Just buying military weapons that contribute nothing to the well-being of our citizens, sending money down a rat hole, contributes to GDP growth! Simple price increases caused by Fed monetary inflation contribute to nominal GDP growth.

None of these factors represents any kind of real increases in economic output. So we should not carelessly cite misleading GDP figures that don't truly reflect what is happening in the economy. Bogus GDP figures explain in part why so many people are feeling squeezed despite our supposedly booming economy.

But since our fiat dollar system is not going away any time soon, it would benefit Congress and the American people to bring more transparency to how and why Fed monetary policy functions.

For starters, the Federal Reserve should:

-- Begin publishing the M3 statistics again. Let us see the numbers that most accurately reveal how much new money the Fed is pumping into the world economy.

-- Tell us exactly what the President's Working Group on Financial Markets does and why.

-- Explain how interest rates are set. Conservatives profess to support free markets, without wage and price controls. Yet the most important price of all, the price of money as determined by interest rates, is set arbitrarily in secret by the Fed rather than by markets! Why is this policy written in stone? Why is there no congressional input at least?

-- Change legal tender laws to allow constitutional legal tender (commodity money) to compete domestically with the dollar.

How can a policy of steadily debasing our currency be defended morally, knowing what harm it causes to those who still believe in saving money and assuming responsibility for themselves in their retirement years? Is it any wonder we are a nation of debtors rather than savers?

We need more transparency in how the Federal Reserve carries out monetary policy, and we need it soon.

Source:
http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2007/cr021507.htm
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Voting Machines, a Ponzi Scheme


by Nancy Tobi
Intro by Bev Harris


A Ponzi Scheme, by definition, is an artifice that is insolvent from its inception, thereby defrauding its funders (in this case, the taxpayers). Ponzi schemes work on the "rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul" principle, as new investment (taxpayer) money is needed to fulfill promises made on earlier investments (tax monies) until the whole scheme collapses.

Our nation has already suffered an incalculable blow from the use of expensive computerized voting equipment, which, by all accounts, has been an abysmal failure by every reasonable criterion: product quality, reliability, accuracy, and security.

Taxpayers are now being required to invest in a certification and voting machine procurement program built on a cycle of lag, non-implementation and obsolescence:

• Products procured before guidelines are established for them;
• Guidelines and testing programs, while trying to catch up to features in already-purchased equipment, add new requirements;
• Each new wave of guidelines obsoletes existing equipment;
• Successive waves of new investments (by taxpayers) are required to catch up to previous assurances

When you peel back the veneer of the whole Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Certification program, with its National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) testing process, what you learn is that the entire system is, in effect, insolvent. Meanwhile, your tax dollars continue to flow into the system (to the tune of nearly $3 million in the EAC's 2005 budget plus nearly $5 million in 2006 and a requested $6 million in its 2007 budget).

When the inevitable collapses occur, as we are now seeing with DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting machines, we are told that we need to keep investing in them because ... well, because we now have so much invested in them. To that end, we are now hearing talk about turning existing DREs into "ballot marking devices" – that is, voting machines that don't count the vote, just mark the ballot for you -- basically, turning each DRE into a $5,000 pencil. And when that doesn't fly, we hear that DREs are needed for adding new features, like text and language converters.

The proposed Holt Bill (HR 811) attempts to require a text converter in every precinct – a demand which originates from groups that, it turns out, are the same ones that lobbied for the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to require the multibillion-dollar DRE purchase in the first place.

What is a "text converter" and what does it mean? Details on the text converter and its utterly impossible timelines are provided later in this report, but for one thing, the new billion-dollar unfunded mandate for "text converters" helps organizations that lobbied for HAVA's massive DRE purchases save face by preventing the entire DRE investment from crashing into the ground like the Hindenburg blimp.

Taxpayers and elections officials certainly did not realize in 2002 when HAVA was used to mandate the purchase of billions of dollars in new voting equipment that this was just the initial investment in what would become a continuing hemorrhage. The proposed Holt Bill furthers the investment in a certification and procurement system that is permanently in arrears. There is one difference between the Holt Bill and HAVA: If passed as written, Holt Bill costs will come out primarily from your local municipal and county coffers.

CERTIFICATION AND PROCUREMENT IN A NUTSHELL (as it was intended to work):

1. EAC approves guidelines (Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, "VVSG"). To help you track this process, let's follow an example. Suppose the guideline says "We've decided the buttons on voting machines must be RED."

2. EAC-certified test labs, in conjunction with the National Standards and Technology Institute (NIST), write "TEST SCRIPTS" to match the guidelines. For example, the test script says "Check that the buttons are red."

3. The states and federal government signal the industry that there will be adequate funds to pay for a new round of voting equipment (the industry will not begin product development for a specialized product without assurances there will be a market to buy their product). Upon legislation saying "every precinct must now feature a voting machine with a red button" industry starts making red-buttoned voting machines.

4. The industry uses the "TEST SCRIPTS" from Step 2 as specifications and requirements for building their product. In-house quality control will confirm "Did you make sure the buttons are red?"

5. The industry submits their new product to the test labs. "Here's my machine with the red button. Please check that it complies."

6. The test labs verify that the final product passes testing according to the original test scripts. "Yes, the button is red. This product complies."

7. The products are sold for use in the nation's election systems. ("Elections officials, here is an invoice for your new voting machines with red buttons.")

This is how it's SUPPOSED to work. Unfortunately, in real life the process doesn't sync up. It's implemented out of order, turning US elections into a vast and unreliable confidence game, where one bad investment chases another.

In real life, you get machines with YELLOW buttons, which are sold to elections officials because the standards stating that the buttons must be RED don't come out until two years after the machines are purchased. Later, in the process of dealing with the yellow button issue -- "No no, it must be red!" -- the guidelines committees also tack on another requirement: "It shall have talking ballots for people who can't read!"

Then Congress makes a law that says every voting precinct shall have talking ballots. So industry thinks money will be appropriated to pay for the new law, and begins to sell machines with red buttons and talking ballots. However the TEST SCRIPTS for the talking ballot feature are not ready until two years after the talking-ballot machines have been purchased by elections officials. And while NIST prepares the talking ballot test scripts, Congress makes a new law: "Voting machines shall now be prohibited from using components made in China on the motherboard."

So while vendors upgrade the talking ballot feature to meet the new requirements, they replace Chinese components with variants made in San Diego, Tokyo, and Minsk. Except that no test scripts have been written for those variants...

DEVELOPMENT TIMELINE FOR VOTING EQUIPMENT PRODUCTS

Bear with us on this. We are trying to keep it simple, but the story is so convoluted that anyone with a logical brain is bound to have trouble assimilating the way the EAC is doing business. You might feel woozy reading this - it is a bumpy ride filled with curves and inexplicable obscurities.

We start our tale with the following premise...
The EAC develops and approves voting systems guidelines, and the voting equipment industry builds products whose specifications meet those guidelines, since the goal is for their equipment to be tested and certified by meeting those same guidelines.

And the following theory...
The EAC-certified labs take the EAC guidelines and uses them to write test scripts so, when testing the final products, the labs can verify those products meet the guidelines.* The requirements are embodied in the test lab test scripts; because it is against these that the product must prove its certifiability.

*This may seem backwards or counter-intuitive, because in the past voting equipment saturated the market even before anyone thought about testing it to any uniform standards for reliability, security, and accuracy. However, today's paradigm appropriately has the process reversed, where requirements are established ahead of product development.

How this works in the real world...
Figuring out how this works in the real world is a challenge, especially when we try to decipher timelines for actually implementing the whole program. It's difficult to figure out because the only thing we know for certain is that it seems to take at least two years for the EAC and its various committees to develop, finalize, and approve the guidelines.

Timelines for the rest of the steps are unknown because we simply have no historical evidence of them ever actually being implemented.

HERE'S WHAT WE DO KNOW ABOUT HOW IT WORKS:

• The EAC publishes the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). (Voluntary because it is up to the states whether or not they want to comply with the federal guidelines, but nearly half of the states have laws on the books requiring compliance of one form or another.)

• The Guidelines are always at least two years behind product to market. So right now the conforming standards are the 2002 Voting System Standards (VSS), which predate the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines, and had been developed by the industry itself under the administration of the National Association of Election Directors (NASED). Under the old system, the industry itself also recruited and paid the test labs, creating an unhealthy conflict of interest and calling into question the validity of the testing and certification program overall.

• With the handover of the testing and certification process from NASED to the EAC, the EAC began working with NIST to develop test scripts for the 2002 standards. The EAC’s 2002 standards had built more rigorous testing protocols on top of NASED’s program. The documented target date for implementation of the EAC’s 2002 standards was for the elections held in November 2006.

• However, the EAC delayed implementation of the new test requirements for the 2002 standards until AFTER the elections. They did this because they knew that NO EQUIPMENT IN USE AT THE TIME WOULD MEET THE TOUGHER TESTING STANDARDS IMPOSED BY NIST.

• So, although the 2002 standards are in place, in fact the EAC cleverly delayed holding the industry accountable to them until Dec. 2006, one month after the November elections. In other words, all existing equipment used in the Nov. 2006 general election had been certified according to previous NASED guidelines (either 1990 or 2002) and not the EAC’s own 2002 testing and certification standards. Some equipment had not been certified at all. (On top of this, most of the equipment had been tested by Ciber, a lab that the EAC secretly decertified three months before the election for failing to perform its duties. Despite the fact that the EAC knew the lab had not properly tested the voting machines – even to the old guidelines – the EAC did not inform election officials or voters that they were about to vote on improperly tested equipment.)

Essentially, all the work and taxpayer money that the EAC expended in developing the testing standards for the 2002 standards were a colossal waste because these standards were never applied to anything in the real world. Our elections were not made any more secure, reliable, or accurate from any of this.

As we traverse from the 2002 standards to the 2005 guidelines (Version I) to the 2005 guidelines (Version II) –- these are anticipated in 2007 or 2008 -- the timelines still never pan out to any effective implementation.

No equipment in use today is certified to higher standards than 1990 or the 2002 NASED guidelines and none has been through rigorous testing...

The 2002 standards were established by NASED working in conjunction with the industry itself. The subsequent NIST testing program built on top of NASED’s 2002 standards demonstrated that those standards were virtually untestable.

The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, from 2005 and forward, were developed for the EAC under the guidance of NIST, and represent a more substantial and robust system.

THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS:

In the 2008 elections, there will be few, if any, systems that would be tested and certified to meet any standards established by the EAC/NIST.

NEVERTHELESS, MORE INVESTMENT SEEMS TO BE INDICATED:

Regardless, states wishing now to comply with federal guidelines should –theoretically – invest in upgrades to their equipment at least to the NASED-EAC 2002 standards and testing certification plan. As of December, 2007, the 2005 guidelines kick in, testing to the 2002 standards will cease, and states wishing to be in compliance would, depending on how their state laws are written, likely need to invest in retesting their equipment to those newer 2005 standards.

To this point, none have done so; there has, in fact, been no equipment submitted to EAC test labs for 2005 guidelines testing and certification.

NIST-RECOMMENDED TEST LABS NOT READY

It turns out that even if equipment were submitted for testing and certification to the new, more rigorous standards instituted by NIST, it seems the labs are not yet ready to begin the testing anyway. John Gale, of the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee, reported in a meeting on November 17, 2006, that he did not believe the NIST labs would be ready to test to the 2005 guidelines even by late 2008:

quote:

"Everything that has been purchased so far is only to 2002 requirements. At the December 2007 date, we'll no longer certify anything to the 2002 standards; they will have to meet 05 requirements. In the past, manufacturers have been reactionary instead of futuristic. We have to allow time for the design, build, test, and NVLAP [National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program] certification. NIST test scripts have to be written to the new ones. It's very important that we talk about the time factor - We are not going to have this done in two years."

And while substandard equipment remains in use in the nation’s elections, and taxpayer dollars continue to spin on the indeterminate timeline for 2005 guidelines implementation, the EAC and its relevant committees are working on the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines Version II, which will replace the 2005 version I, rendering 2005-certified equipment (should there ever be any) obsolete in 2010, when those Guidelines are expected to become the testing and certification standard.

Finding our way through the EAC guidelines, testing and certification maze

Lost? That’s understandable. This business model doesn’t make sense.

The EAC claims to have guidelines and testing standards in place for their kick ass certification program to provide reliability, accuracy, and security for America’s voting systems.

The reality is: None of it is ever put into action.

No systems are submitted for testing and certification under current guidelines.
Current guidelines are not applied. And even if they were applied, current guidelines are two years behind product to market. When testing standards and guidelines are improved, they are not implemented until AFTER elections take place. Talk about locking the barn door after the horse has disappeared into the woods!

No wonder things aren't working as planned.

This is an unacceptably inefficient, ineffective, and expensive way to do business, both for the industry itself and for election jurisdictions attempting to use public funding to keep up with an ever changing high tech product line.

EAC assurances (that the voting equipment has passed rigorous testing and certification) can provide NO confidence to America’s election officials, voters, and taxpayers that investing into this equipment is a sound or rational move.

THE NEXT ROUND OF INVESTMENTS:

The Holt Bill, HR 811, mandates untested, uncertified, and unfunded technology for every polling place in the nation.

The new Holt Bill, HR 811, mandates a brand new techno-toy for every polling place in America by the 2008 elections. The new technology mandated by this legislation is a "text conversion" device to help disabled, illiterate, and minority language voters by converting the ballot text to what Holt refers to as "accessible media".

We embrace the right of every American to vote privately and independently. However, we question the method identified in HR 811 —a text-to-digital data conversion device—for achieving this worthy goal.

We question the HR 811 voting equipment mandate because most informed sources do not believe the mandated text conversion device even exists, and further—if it does exist, or is currently under development—most informed sources contend it is impossible that such a device could ever be properly tested or certified in time for the 2008 deadline imposed by Holt.

Despite all efforts to provide some clarity on this complex subject, if the explanations provided in this article nonetheless prove confusing, here is the important piece of information everyone needs to understand:

THE UNFUNDED MANDATE IN THE HOLT BILL:

HR 811, if passed as written, contains a significant unfunded mandate, which may incur to every polling jurisdiction in the nation (185,000 of them) an initial cost outlay of roughly $7,000 for new voting equipment (further programming, testing and maintenance could reach a total of up to $20,000 per device).

Furthermore, this equipment, if found to exist (which is itself a controversial matter), will be neither tested nor certified to any standards for accuracy, security, or reliability.

Given this reality, the wisdom of the Holt Bill's mandate of yet a whole new round of untested, uncertified, and unfunded computerized voting equipment into every polling place in the nation for our 2008 elections, must be called into question.

WHAT IS THE TEXT CONVERSION MANDATE, AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Let's look at the new HR 811-mandated techno-toy, and why it could not possibly be available, in tested and certified form, in time for the 2008 elections.

To understand what the Holt Bill means by converting "printed content to accessible media" we can look at two historical sources. The first is the Election Assistance Commission's (EAC) Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG-I) drafted in early 2005 by the EAC Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), revised by the EAC in the summer of 2005, and subsequently finalized and approved in December 2005. The final 2005 VVSG-I, (Section 4.1.1 Accuracy Requirements) includes the following guideline:

quote:

a. For all paper-based voting systems:

i. Scanning ballot positions on paper ballots to detect selections for individual candidates and contests
ii. Conversion of selections detected on paper ballots into digital data

In other words, all paper-based systems must have their content converted to digital data. Paper-based systems, in and of themselves, are not enough for the EAC.

The second source for understanding HR 811's techno-toy mandate is HR 939, an election reform bill submitted by Representative Tubbs Jones, and mightily supported by People for the American Way prior to the release of Holt’s competing bill. Tubbs Jones's bill spells out exactly the meaning of text conversion to "accessible media". HR 939 states that the "individual paper record":

quote:
shall be available for visual, audio, and pictorial inspection and verification by the voter, with language translation available for all forms of inspection and verification

Putting two and two together, we understand that Holt's "conversion of printed content to accessible media" means that every polling place in the country must have some sort of device capable of scanning the ballot, converting it to digital data, which can then be converted to different media, such as audio and visual (even pictorial).

Why won't there be a tested and certified product to meet the 2008 mandate?
Because the timelines are impossible, unless the process is once again performed out of order, which would render the testing and certification moot, and which is what turned this into a Ponzi operation in the first place.

HERE'S WHY IT’S IMPOSSIBLE BY 2008:

The HR 811 mandate for a text conversion device ostensibly comes from the 2005 Guidelines - purportedly applicable in 2008. SOMEONE stuck the text conversion requirement into the Holt Bill. The Standards Board, a representational body of top state and local election officials from every state, which is responsible for making real world recommendations about the guidelines, had pointedly recommended against including the text conversion guideline into the guidelines.

Despite the clear Standards Board resolution to strike all language relating to text conversion, somehow the guideline was not only reinserted into the 2005 guidelines, but was actually peppered throughout that document wholesale. And the guideline was then used as the convenient rationale for inserting the device into the Holt Bill.

So what's the timeline for creating the test scripts so the new HR 811 -mandated techno-toy products can be developed, tested and certified to the 2005 VVSG, Version I and/or VVSG Version II?

Not an easy question to answer. We need to go through a few more twists and turns to even try to understand how this might play out.

It is our understanding, supported by Mr. Gale's testimony shown above, that the EAC-certified test labs do not yet have any test scripts for 2005 guidelines, which would include the HR 811 -mandated text conversion device. They haven't, in other words, figured out how the device should actually work. They don't know yet if it needs a red or a blue button.

Dr. Britt Williams, Professor Emeritus, Kennesaw University, in his Senate testimony, the January 2007 Feinstein hearings on electronic voting, remarked:
quote:

"[The EAC 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines] are not required until December 2007. In the meantime, voting systems can continue to be certified under the 2002 Standards and, at present, no voting system has been submitted for Certification under the 2005 Guidelines….The Technical Guidelines Development Committee and NIST are developing what is being called the 2007 Guidelines. [These guidelines] are scheduled to be used in draft form in July 2007. Assuming they will require the same timeline as the 2005 Guidelines for public comment, revision, and final approval, it is likely that these 2007 Guidelines will not be required until December 2008, a month after the 2008 elections."

Dr. Williams' final conclusion almost perfectly mirrors the EAC strategy for improving the 2002 VSS, which were promised for the 2006 election. So, too, were the 2005 guidelines originally promised to be delivered in time for the 2008 national elections.

But see how history repeats itself with the EAC. Mark Skall, Chief, Software Testing Division, NIST, in a presentation dated March 22, 2005, made the following claims about the EAC efforts to improve the 2002 VSS:

• The goal is to provide guidance to states in time for the 2006 election cycle, by providing the following improvements to the program:
• "Augment" and improve the 2002 VSS to:
• Fill in gaps (accessibility and usability, VVPAT, wireless, and others)
• Correct errors in the 2002 VSS
• Help to ensure that installed voting system software is the software that has been tested
• Produce initial work products in April, plans for completion in November 2005

As we now know, these goals were never met because the EAC delayed implementation until one month after those elections.

No equipment has ever been submitted for certification under the 2005 guidelines...

This statement, made in Dr. Williams' testimony, while disconcerting, makes sense, because the 2007 VVSG (VVSG–II) is pending, and the EAC effectively grandfathered all existing equipment to the 2002 standards, when they implemented testing to that standard only AFTER the 2006 elections had taken place.

Testing, after all, is expensive; especially when you know the products won't pass the tests, and you will then be expected to cure conditions of failure.

Why go through that drill when the EAC essentially is telling you not to bother?

Nonetheless, in December, 2007, the 2005 VVSG-I is supposed to become effective, meaning states with laws requiring compliance to federal voting equipment standards theoretically can not get fixes to existing systems unless they are tested and certified to those standards. Additionally, states purchasing new equipment should only buy equipment that is tested and certified to the 2005 VVSG-I.

Theoretically, because according to Dr. Williams’ testimony noted above, these guidelines will more than likely only kick in ONE MONTH AFTER THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS in 2008. Just like the 2002 NIST testing standards, which were delayed to a month following the November 2006 elections, when they would do nobody any good, anyway.

If this is the case, the EAC will again carry over existing equipment to the 2002 standards, since thus far nothing meaningful has been done in the industry or in the EAC Certification Program to move beyond those standards.

In his testimony, Dr. Williams continues:

quote:

"Historically, the timeline between the implementation of a Guideline and the time the vendors can produce a voting system under those Guidelines is about 2 years. Unless something out of the ordinary happens, we will go through the 2010, and probably the 2012, elections with the currently available voting systems."

This tells us that the EAC continues to waste taxpayer dollars developing standards for certification, but the industry is never required to apply them to equipment used in our elections.

It also tells us that the text conversion mandate in HR 811 is unattainable in any reliable, accurate, or secure manner for the bill’s 2008 mandated timeline for implementation.

REALITY CHECK:

It is now FEB 2007 and every voting system on the market has been certified a) against NASED's 1990 or b) against 2002 VSS, or c) not at all - and certainly not the 2005 Guidelines.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Williams's two-year timetable, we are looking rather at NO LESS THAN SIX YEARS from any given VVSG and its complementary certification testing standards before any product, including HR 811's text conversion technotoy, is introduced to the market in any manner to comply with EAC 2005 testing and certification protocols.

But this is all speculation, because we have not seen any real world product development cycles to meet the 2005 guidelines and are not likely to see anything at all, since soon enough the 2007 standards will make those moot anyway.

What does this mean for our HR 811 -mandated text conversion techno-toy?

For the HR 811-mandated text conversion device intended for use in our 2008 elections, what this means is this:

• This is a device for which standards are identified in the 2005 Guidelines.
• Test labs are only just now being identified by the EAC.
• These test labs are only just now beginning to write test scripts for the 2005 Guidelines.
• There are as yet no test scripts for the text conversion product; informed sources believe there would be none until December 2008.
• If the test scripts are available in December 2008, and if things actually played out the way they are supposed to, the industry would then begin to design their products according to those test scripts.
• Give them a year or so to plan and design the product – that brings us to December 2009.
• Give them another year or so to build it – that brings us to December 2010.
• Give them another year or so to test it, and we are looking at certifiable text conversion products no sooner than December 2011.

This timeline, however, is highly optimistic. Let's consider just a few of the rigorous standards the 2005 EAC Voting System Guidelines indicate for the text conversion device, against which the device would need to be tested in order to obtain federal certification:

quote:

4.1.1 Accuracy Requirements For each processing function indicated above [which includes "conversion of selections detected on paper ballots into digital data"], the voting system shall achieve a target error rate of no more than one in 10,000,000 ballot positions, with a maximum acceptable error rate in the test process of one in 500,000 ballot positions.

Yes, to be certified, this new text conversion device must achieve an error rate of no more than one in ten million ballot positions. This is quite a remarkable goal for a new technological device; it would certainly take quite a lot of expensive product development and testing to reach such a lofty target.

Furthermore, the 2005 EAC Voting System Guidelines state the following stringent requirements for the text conversion device:

quote:

4.1.5.2 Ballot Reading Accuracy

This paper-based system requirement governs the conversion of the physical ballot into electronic data. Reading accuracy for ballot conversion refers to the ability to:
a. Recognize vote punches or marks, or the absence thereof, for each possible selection on the ballot
b. Discriminate between valid punches or marks and extraneous perforations, smudges, and folds
c. Convert the vote punches or marks, or the absence thereof, for each possible selection on the ballot into digital signals To ensure accuracy, paper-based systems shall:
d. Detect punches or marks that conform to vendor specifications with an error rate not exceeding the requirement indicated in Subsection 4.1.1
e. Ignore, and not record, extraneous perforations, smudges, and folds
f. Reject ballots that meet all vendor specifications at a rate not to exceed 2 percent

This new high tech product has some pretty difficult government-specified requirements. It would be remarkable if the industry, upon receiving the final test scripts no sooner than December 2008, could develop such a refined and precise text conversion device even by the 2010 elections!

With this in mind, one would imagine that any proposed federal legislation calling for the use of new voting equipment would, at the very least, contemplate and integrate the federal government's own requirements into any such mandates, allowing the requisite time required for the industry to design and develop products that could meet these rigorous federally developed and sanctioned specifications and requirements.

Our timeline allowing for the possibility of a certified text conversion product by 2011 begins to look more and more impossible, given the EAC's own certification requirements. We optimistically projected three years time from test script development to product release, but we know in reality that here we are five years from the VVSG 2002 and there are still no products developed that go beyond those guidelines, and few, if any, that can demonstrate compliance with these relatively weak standards under the more rigorous testing regime developed by NIST.

Follow the bouncing ball - you'll never be able to catch it.

* * * * *
If anyone can refute this logic I will happily retire from this analysis of the EAC Certification Program as a Ponzi Scheme.

-- Nancy Tobi, Chair, Democracy for New Hampshire

For additional background, or further investigation, you can access this PowerPoint presentation that explains the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) voting equipment certification program, and why it is a Ponzi Scheme:
http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/2848

For more information on the 2005 VVSG:
http://eac.gov/vvsg_intro.htm

For more information on HR 939:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h109-939

For more information on the TGDC discussion of timetables for testing:
http://vote.nist.gov/HFP/HFPteleconnotes111706.htm

For more information on the Standards Board resolutions eliminating text conversion language from the 2005 VVSG:
http://www.eac.gov/docs/Standards%20Board%20Final%20Resolution%20(As%20Amended).pdf

For more information on Dr. Britt Williams’ testimony at the Feinstein hearings:
http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/0207Williams.pdf

For more information on the EAC’s budget for the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and Certification program:
http://www.eac.gov/docs/Senate%20Appropriations%20Testimony%20FY07%20-%20FINAL.pdf

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What Kind of Economy?


by James K. Galbraith
February 16, 2007


In a debate over the Democratic future, no one should confuse the Hamilton Project with the Republican past. Robert Rubin and his associates have invited a broad dialogue on economic inequality and strategic investment, and on many specific policy questions--including education, health, taxes and wages--they will define the high-profile, wholly respectable neo-Clintonian position in the season ahead. There's nothing wrong with that.

But these advances come at a price, which will be exacted in two areas: the world trading system and domestic fiscal policy. Both of these are far more fundamental to the Hamilton mission than any particular social policy reform. Indeed, one purpose of the Hamilton Project, it seems clear, is to propose just enough creative social advances--such as wage insurance, better teacher pay and healthcare reform--so as to divert discussion from the bedrock commitments to free trade and a balanced budget.

Progressives shouldn't let this happen. And yet we have our own work to do: Our trade position is obsolete, and there is for now no clear progressive fiscal policy. We need to be talking trade and budgets, not simply because they are too important to bargain away, and not just to contest Rubin's worldview, but to build one of our own that is realistic, compelling and also serves larger purposes, including environmental survival and social justice.

On trade, the Hamiltonians favored the North American Free Trade Agreement, while most populists and progressives opposed it. This fight has been replayed endlessly, and it continues to color the arguments over the Central American Free Trade Agreement and the bilateral free-trade agreements now under negotiation. But as some NAFTA opponents, notably Jeff Faux, have recognized, it's time to get over it. Whether NAFTA created or cost jobs initially, the economies of Mexico and the United States are now about as integrated as they are going to get, and the effect is basically finished. As a result, Mexico's economy grew with ours in the late 1990s and went bust when ours did in 2001. Almost all discussion of outsourcing now focuses on China and India, two countries with whom we do not have, and will not get, free-trade agreements.

More broadly, the late 1990s showed two things about trade agreements. First, they don't prevent full employment in the United States: We went smartly to a full employment economy in 1998 and stayed there for three years. Second, they don't do much good either. Compared with the productivity gains engendered by full employment in the boom, those brought on by NAFTA in the mid-1990s were trivial if detectable at all.

So what's the debate these days really about? Why are the Hamilton Projectors so passionate about "free trade"? Perhaps the reason has something to do with the industries they come from. US finance, insurance and the "intellectual property" trades want "free-trade agreements" (and a successful conclusion of the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations) because they want access to other markets and stiff enforcement of trademarks, copyrights and patents. In addition, agribusiness--another sector at the forefront of current trade talks--wants every wheat, corn, rice and cooking-oil consumer it can find.

Trade agreements pushing this agenda don't cost American jobs. The problem is that they are predatory. Thus a main effect of forcing open agricultural markets in Central America will be to displace small corn and bean farmers from the land, increasing migration: As food moves south, people move north. A main effect of the TRIPS regime--the international agreement on intellectual property rights--is that it has obliged poor countries to pay extortionate prices for medicines. A main effect of open financial markets is capital flight and tax avoidance. All of these are well worth opposing, without the crutch of a pretext, and a new agenda might start with this slogan: "Get the fraud out of free trade."

Trade with China is another matter, for here is a fast-growing country that benefits hugely from US trade. China thus poses the question of trade without posing a question of trade agreements. And China has many people very worried.

On China the Hamilton Project--otherwise resolutely against interventions--has harnessed widespread anxieties to its own objectives. The Hamiltonians endorse the idea that China is a challenge. It is a challenge, they say, to be dealt with not via tariffs or quotas but by a massive revaluation of the Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB), for which liberal senators like Charles Schumer and economists like Tom Palley also forcefully call.

Would a big RMB revaluation solve America's China-trade "problem"? Well, it might hit China's exporters (and also, inevitably, its workers) hard. Multinationals might migrate to other low-wage countries; American importers might seek other sources of supply, in other corners of the Third World. But this much is sure: Not a single low-wage job would return to the United States. So, American consumers could be harmed, while American workers wouldn't be helped. One has to ask: What gives? Why is this an issue for the progressive agenda?

Who really benefits from the pressure that our Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, has been putting on Beijing? Well, speculators have flooded Chinese property markets in the past few years, contributing to a massive bubble in Shanghai and elsewhere. (China's trillion-dollar asset reserves come largely from sterilization of those investments--a central bank maneuver to insure that dollars do not circulate in China--and not just from its trade surplus.) If Paulson succeeds, they clearly would make out nicely. It may be that some of those speculators live in New York. That may explain Paulson's call--and Schumer's support--for an RMB revaluation. But it's not a reason for the rest of us to jump on board.

The facts are clear: NAFTA is a done deal, and China is a success story we have to live with. Progressives need a trade narrative that moves past these two issues. Broadly, this means accepting manufactured imports and dropping the idea that we can control--or that it matters much--who assembles television sets or stitches shirts. Standards to guard against flagrant abuses such as child and prison labor are fine, but it's an illusion to think they will, or should, dent the flow of goods from China. A progressive trade agenda should focus, instead, on building stronger world markets for our exports, and in ways that do not trample on the needs and rights of poor people in poor countries. That should provide plenty of room for future fights with free-trade absolutists.

At home, we have better things to do. We should specifically focus on creating new jobs, in sectors (including high tech, education, healthcare and energy conservation) that meet national needs and build world markets for our goods. We should rebuild our cities and transport systems, protect our vulnerable Gulf Coast and otherwise get on with meeting the challenge of climate change. And that raises the second big problem of the Hamilton agenda, which is its insistence on balancing the budget.

Today, many Democrats are converts to balanced budgets and pay-as-you-go budget procedures, and many accept that when Democrats return to power, deficits must be cut before anything else is done. But the world has changed, and while this formula appeared to work for Bill Clinton, it probably won't work for Hillary if she gets that far. Clinton was able to preside over a largely private-sector boom--the information-technology bubble--that can't be repeated, in a time when we weren't yet aware of the wolves at our door. But, just as Alexander Hamilton proposed to build America with public works, today we require major public investment for the vast challenges we face. Of these, as Al Gore warns, the largest is to transform our patterns of energy use and defend against climate change.

If we fail here, then in a century or so some of our coastal cities and many others elsewhere will flood--as New Orleans did--suffering irreparable damage. Around the world, food supplies will fail and populations will move--massively, uncontrollably, miserably. If future generations mean anything, the benefits from preventing this are clear. The necessary scale is huge. The work must start soon. It makes sense to borrow to do this job, especially given the prevailing low long-term interest rates. If we insist on paying from current revenue, it won't happen. And that is what is at stake, just to begin with, in the argument over balancing the budget. There are other important issues, but this one is quite sufficient to make the point.

Thus, even if running budget deficits has important economic costs, we ought to pay them in order to meet our most pressing objectives, on climate change and other priorities. But in fact running moderate fiscal deficits has no discernible costs. In particular, the claim that current deficits are raising interest rates can't be backed up even by the best efforts of those who believe it. In a paper last year, I examined the detailed work on this topic of two leading Hamiltonian economists, Bill Gale and Peter Orszag, and showed that their own econometrics found no such effect. When I pointed this out, Gale and Orszag reacted with silence.

Deficit-fetishism also bolsters the perennial campaign to cut the Social Security system, now taken up by the alarmist David Walker, head of the Government Accountability Office, and by Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve System. Here the Hamilton Project strategy document is extremely reticent--it barely mentions Social Security by name. But it is riddled with code words about the long-term "entitlement problem," which, it avers, can be solved only by a "bipartisan commission" acting on well-known options, behind closed doors. This is not reassuring.

In fact, Social Security is in better financial shape than ever, holding vast stocks of Treasury bonds on which interest can and will be paid. No economic or budget imperative requires that Social Security be cut, now or later. In private discussion Hamilton leaders let on that they understand this. But they are prepared, nevertheless, to include Social Security cuts--pension cuts for America's elderly, many of whom would otherwise be poor--in some sort of grand deficit bargain. Progressives must be absolutely categorical in rejecting any such deal.

Healthcare costs are a big problem. But they are a problem affecting both public and private healthcare, not Medicare and Medicaid alone. And it's highly unlikely that the problem of rising healthcare costs will extend to the point projected by Bernanke and Walker, who imply that healthcare will absorb one-third of the GDP within a generation--two or three times as much as in any other country. If that happens, as Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has pointed out, we could cost-effectively contract out medical care to the Canadians and the French.

Is there anything really wrong with fiscal policy right now? Present deficits are small, and it's obvious from low long-term interest rates that financial markets do not take the exploding-deficit stories seriously. The greater risk is that a continued fall in home-building and prices could bring on recession, requiring a more active fiscal policy and bigger deficits than we have now. Sure, Congress should let the Bush tax cuts mostly expire, and if one wants to raise future tax rates just to make the long-term projections look better--well, fine. But that's a cosmetic gesture, with no current impact, and easily changed if need be by any later Congress. Our main task is to deliver on the real needs of the country. If we do that, fiscal transgressions will be forgiven. If we fail, fiscal probity will neither excuse nor save us.

Finally, progressives should turn their energies to a challenge that the Hamiltonians never discuss and seem determined to ignore, and that is to devise effective new rules for the global financial system. For the world is changing in ways that will not permit a return to the go-go Wild West of international finance of the 1990s, even if Robert Rubin and his colleagues do return to power in 2009.

The 1997 Asian crisis and the 1998 Russian crisis marked--it is now clear--the last days of an illusion: that unfettered global credit markets can govern themselves. Russia has since retreated into itself, Asia is developing a sophisticated substitute for the Asian Monetary Fund we denied them a decade ago and most of Latin America has rejected neoliberal globalization at the polls, while new structures of mutual assistance for development are gradually being built. The chaos of a financial system run by bankers alone is therefore gradually yielding to new systems of control.

We should welcome this development. We should oppose efforts to introduce new instabilities--which is basically the issue today between Wall Street and China. The challenge before us is not to restore the global dominance of American banks. We should not play junior partners in that game but instead should help plan for a smooth transition to something better--protecting as far as possible not symbols of power but the broad benefits of our standard of life.

As part of this, a progressive economics needs to break with the polite traditions of our subject in one other way. We cannot avert our eyes, as many economists habitually do, from the disaster of Bush's foreign policy. The calamity in Iraq is plainly causing the world to rethink how much it can rely on American leadership, and this has consequences already visible in the decline of the dollar. If there is a war with Iran, the rethinking will accelerate, and what we've seen so far could be only a harbinger of greater difficulties still to come.

Although a collapse of the dollar reserve system probably isn't imminent, this issue will not disappear, even if Bush's policies are decisively rejected in 2008. Left unattended, it could lead to a repeat of the 1970s, when progressive hopes were knee-capped by international financial instability, a declining dollar and externally inspired inflation.

This problem defies easy solutions, but we who are progressives, who are populists, who are concerned about the economic security of working Americans, of the country as a whole and of the world system, should be thinking about them. We should be working, with international partners, on blueprints for a new system combining mutual and collective security with economic stabilization. For only this can foster sustainable development worldwide, while at the same time permitting us to attend to social justice and the environment at home.

This is not a job that private banks want to turn over to us. It is therefore not going to be found on the agenda of the Hamilton Project. That is a powerful reason that it should be on ours.

James K. Galbraith's Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire has just been published by Palgrave-MacMillan.

Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0216-26.htm
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Al Neuharth: Bush Is Worst President of All-Time


Editor & Publisher
By E&P Staff
February 16, 2007


Al Neuharth, the former Gannett chief, USA Today founder and currently weekly columnist for that newspaper, has had a change of heart.

A year ago, in honor of President's Day, he stated that while he was often critical of George W. Bush, he did not, and probably would not ever, crack his list of the five worst presidents we've ever had.

A year later he admits he was wrong. In his USA Today column today he announces that Bush has not only cracked the bottom five, he's now at the very bottom.

Last year, Neuharth, a World War II hero who has met every president since Eisenhower, listed his five worst as Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. "It's very unlikely Bush can crack that list," Neuharth wrote.

Now he admits: "I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top." By top, of course, he means bottom.

Neuharth, after calling the Iraq war Bush's "albatross," concludes: "Is he just a self-touted decider doing what he thinks right? Or is he an arrogant ruler who doesn't care or consider what the public or Congress believes best for the country?"

"Despite his play on words and slogans, Bush didn't learn the value or meaning of mea culpa (acknowledgement of an error) during his years at Yale."

"Bush admitting his many mistakes on Iraq and ending that fiasco might make many of us forgive, even though we can never forget the terrible toll in lives and dollars."

Neuharth, always considered a political moderate, made waves more than two years ago when he called for a phased U.S. pullout from Iraq. He still has not been joined in this by many mainstream pundits or editorial pages.

Striking a different pose, David Broder in The Washington Post today writes: "It may seem perverse to suggest that, at the very moment the House of Representatives is repudiating his policy in Iraq, President Bush is poised for a political comeback. But don't be astonished if that is the case."

Source:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003546943
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Catalogue of Provocations


As Israel sets to dismantle age-old landmarks in the holy site of Al-Aqsa, Khaled Amayreh gauges Muslim and Arab reactions, and, as well, the apparent cohesion on the Fatah-Hamas Palestinian front.


Israel's encroachments upon the Al-Aqsa Mosque have not been sporadic, but, rather, a systematic endeavour

When Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli army's chief rabbi, General Shlomo Goren, tried to convince a commander of the conquering forces, Uzi Narkis, to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque "once and for all". This story was retold by Narkis shortly before his death in 1997 and quoted by Avi Shlaim in his important book, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World.

"There was an atmosphere of spiritual elation. Paratroopers were milling around in a daze. Narkis was standing for a moment on his own, deep in thought, when Goren went up to him and said 'Uzi, this is the time to put a hundred kilogrammes of explosives in the Mosque of Omar, and that's it. We'll get rid of it once and for all.' Narkis said 'Rabbi, stop it.' Goren then said to him, 'Uzi, you'll enter the history books by virtue of this deed.' Narkis replied, 'I have already recorded my name in the pages of the history of Jerusalem.' Goren walked away without saying another word."

Goren re-entered the Haram Al-Sharif esplanade on 15 August 1967, in military uniform along with two-dozen soldiers from the Israeli army, in order to take measurements of its length and width. Afterwards, Goren announced where the Jewish "Second Temple" would be positioned.

Two weeks after this incident, the Israeli occupation army seized the key to the Moroccan Gate leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Four days after the seizure of East Jerusalem, Israeli army bulldozers wantonly demolished the Maghariba and Al-Sharaf neighbourhoods, levelling them to the ground. The Palestinian inhabitants of the two neighbourhoods were expelled unceremoniously at gunpoint. At least 135 houses, two mosques, and two religious schools were completely destroyed.

In April 1968, Israel confiscated the Haret Al-Maghariba for "public use" and built on the site a large plaza in front of the so-called "Wailing" or "Western Wall". The Haret Al-Maghariba and the adjacent smaller Haret Al-Sharaf, which was also obliterated, were both Islamic waqf (religious endowment) property dating back to the Kurdish Muslim warrior Salaheddin Al-Ayoubi who defeated the Crusaders and restored Jerusalem to Islam.

On 21 August 1969, an Australian Christian Zionist, bearing the name Michael Dennis Rohan, set fire to the interior of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fire quickly destroyed the exquisite and ancient minbar, or pulpit, of Salaheddin (a new minbar, a replica of the old one, was put into place 1 February 2007). Rohan claimed he was "the Lord's emissary" and acting upon divine instructions. He said his purpose was to enable the Jews to build a temple in order to hasten the second advent of Jesus. Israeli authorities, who later claimed that Rohan was deranged, hindered efforts to extinguish the fire.

In 1970, Israeli occupation authorities began intensive excavation works directly beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque on the southern and western sides, and in 1977, digging continued and a large tunnel was opened beneath the women's prayer area. In 1979, a new tunnel was dug under the mosque, going east to west.

On 2 March 1982, an armed Jewish terrorist and Talmudic student attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque from Bab Al-Silsila after assaulting Muslim guards. Eventually, he was overpowered.

On 11 April 1982, a Jewish American terrorist, who was also an Israeli soldier, entered the Dome of the Rock and started firing randomly at Muslim worshipers. Dozens of people were killed and injured. The Israeli government subsequently pardoned Allen Goodman, a member of the Jewish Defence League, after he spent but a few years in jail.

On 27 April 1982, Jewish terrorist leader Meir Kahana, along with 100 of his followers, stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque carrying a large diagram of the Second Temple he was planning to build "on the ruins" of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

On 27 January 1984, two waqf guards saw two Jewish terrorists fleeing near the Golden Gate. The two left behind ladders, 13 kilogrammes of explosives, and 21 Israeli- manufactured grenades similar to ones found there previously.

On 29 March 1984, the Archaeological Department of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs dug a tunnel, one metre in length, two metres in width and 10 metres deep near the western part of Al-Aqsa Mosque, endangering the Islamic "Majlis" or council building.

On 1 August 1984, Al-Aqsa security guards discovered another group of Jewish terrorists preparing to blow up the mosque. Sheikh Saadeddin Al-Alami, mufti of Jerusalem, said: "had it not been for the protection of God, the whole mosque would have been completely obliterated.

Also on 1 August 1984, the Jewish terrorist Youssef Zeruya was convicted of plotting to blow up the Dome of the Rock Mosque and sentenced to three years in jail.

On 8 October 1990, Israeli "border police" soldiers murdered as many as 22 Palestinians and injured more than 100 others during a protest triggered by an attempt by Jewish extremists to lay the cornerstone for a Jewish temple in the Haram Al-Sharif plaza.

On 19 August 1991, an Israeli judge, Ezra Kama, ruled that the Israeli police, not Palestinians, provoked the violence. The UN also condemned Israel for the carnage.

In September 1996, Israeli occupation authorities opened a large ancient tunnel beneath Haram Al-Sharif, sparking bloody clashes with Palestinian Authority police throughout the West Bank in which 57 Palestinians and 16 Israelis were killed.

In December 1997, Jewish terrorists tried to toss a pig's head into the Haram Al-Sharif compound.

On 28 September 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- then opposition leader -- in deliberate provocation led hundreds of Israeli crack police into the Haram Al-Sharif compound in order to "underscore Jewish rights". The next day, Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out.

On 7 February 2007, Israeli bulldozers began digging outside Bab Al-Maghariba (the Moroccan Gate). Israel claimed that it was but repairing an old ramp leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque. Muslim officials contend the digging is part of Israeli designs against the mosque.

Two days later, Israeli occupation authorities prevented Muslims from accessing Al-Aqsa Mosque for the weekly congregational prayer. With effort a few thousand Palestinians entered the mosque where they protested against the provocative excavations. The Israeli police fired tear gas and stun grenades at the protesters, injuring several of them.

Source:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/832/re63.htm
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