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April 6, 2002
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Tzaporah
Ryter
Under
Fire: an American Student in Ramallah
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
Buy
This Explosive
New Book at an
Amazing Discount!
Reviews of Gore:
a User's Manual
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April 6, 2002
Citizen Reform Groups and the "Cain-Gold"
Bill
by Ralph Nader
One of the hardest decisions for citizen reform
groups to make when supporting legislation that is pending for
years is how much weakening they will tolerate before they break
away in opposition.
Campaign finance reform in Congress,
after years of struggle by coalition groups such as Common Cause
and Public Citizen, passed and was unenthusiastically signed
into law by President Bush last month. Popularly known as the
 McCain-Feingold bill (after Republican
Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold), this
original reform of corrupt money in politics has been subjected
to serious attrition. Originally, it provided for some free
television and radio time for ballot-qualified candidates vying
for federal office. That and other provisions were dropped in
order to pick up support for passage -- so much so that some
observers began calling the legislation the "Cain-Gold"
bill.
The core of the new law is banning "soft
money" -- those unlimited hundreds of millions of dollars
mostly from business interests that flow only into the coffers
of the political parties. But in return, McCain-Feingold had
to agree to doubling "hard money" that any person
could give directly to members of Congress or Presidential candidates.
Beginning after the 2002 elections, individuals can give $4,000
for an entire election cycle (primary and general election)
instead of $2000.
As Congressional opponents and their
outside patrons chipped away at the legislation during the past
four years, the outside reform groups, which have been striving
for reform of the auction system of elections for over two decades,
continued to bite their lips and remained in support. First,
it was half a loaf is better than nothing; then it was a quarter
of a loaf. Butthen it became an unwillingness to turn against
the legislation, given all those thousands of dedicated hours
and commitment to the idea of reform that the bill clung to
in their minds.
Well, one of the long-time citizen organizations
concluded that the erosion of the legislation was too much to
take. The U.S. Public interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) on
March 20th denounced and opposed McCain-Feingold.
In its statement, U.S. PIRG said:
"In a climate of spiraling fundraising,
and in the wake of the Enron debacle, Congress had the opportunity
to pass real campaign finance reform that would have reduced
the influence of money on American democracy. Unfortunately,
politicians were not up to the task. . . the Senate passed a
soft money 'ban' riddled with loopholes and actually increased
the amount that the wealthiest individuals can contribute to
candidates."
The partially student funded PIRG predicted
that "hard money will skyrocket, soft money will go to
state and local parties and independent expenditures, candidates
will not spend less time fundraising, and big donors will still
buy election results to put their favored candidates in office."
The groups also predicted that President
George W. Bush will become the first major party candidate to
refuse to accept voluntary spending limits in the 2004 general
election. One Republican campaign manager has predicted that
Bush could easily raise $500 million in hard dollars -- an unheard
of amount.
It was not easy for U.S. PIRG to oppose
the bill. But there are limits to continual concessions that
defeat the purpose of the legislation. Watch for a huge increase
in complexity in the federal election rules which already necessitate
a very expensive software program merely for candidatecompliance.
Soon small party candidates will not be able to afford the compliance
costs, never mind the ballot access hurdles, just to have a
chance to compete.
Badly boomerang-prone as the new law
is, it did break the myth that no campaign finance reform could
ever get through Congress and be signed by a Republican President.
Even if it took a myth of a bill to achieve that result.
Senator Russell Feingold told me last
year that he is going to introduce a bolder public financing
of public elections bill soon after the McCain-Feingold bill
passes. That would certainly simplify the rules as well.
U.S. PIRG, in the meantime, urges the
following ways to sever the link between big money and politics:
contribution limits set at a low level that average Americans
can afford, mandatory spending limits, strict limits on out-of-district
contributions, tax credits for small political donations, and
free media for candidates."
This is their answer to what they call
the recent "sham reform that takes us backwards."
See http://www.pirg.org
for more details.
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