HAIL TO THE THIEF !

[decalvas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

[http://www.bushwatch.com ... sign the petition ...]


                                         HAIL TO THE THIEF !



                       BUSH ON VERGE OF STEALING ELECTION

At 1 p.m. ET Florida State Judge Lewis ruled that one of George W. Bush's
major Florida
fund-raisers and a key member of his Florida election campaign, Katherine
Harris, who
also happens to be Florida's Sec. of State, has the discretion to demand
that all votes be
handed in by 5 p.m. today. The Gore campaign immediately responded by
declaring that,
although Harris was given the discretion to demand that the votes be
submitted to her by
the end of the day, the court decision was also an injunction upon her that
her actions
can't be arbitrary. Thus, they understood the unjunction to mean that
Harris could use her
discretion in accepting late hand counts from the various counties, but
that she could not
be arbitrary if she were not to accept them. That is, she would have to
give good cause for
not accepting a particular hand count report from a county.

What we think Judge Lewis has done is wash his hands of the Florida voting
problem and given the discretion to accept or reject hand counted votes to the
Bush campaign through the Florida Secretary of State. That's like putting the
wolf in charge of the hen house. Does anyone think Harris will "do the right
thing"? You've got to be kidding. Also, given what we know about the Florida
absentee voting system, there's no way Gore's going to gain a majority there.
Gore's only hope is with the late hand counted votes being accepted by Harris,
estimated earlier today by NBC to be 6,000 additional votes for Gore in
Miami-Dade County, alone.

What this means, then, is that while law suits of various kinds favoring Al
Gore
could go on, they would be after the fact of the Friday deadline for overseas
ballots and unlikely to do much good, no matter how just they might be. While
the Bush campaign was working both inside and outside Florida to stop the vote
counting, it was also beating the drum of public opinion to push for a halt
on the
basis of the "good" of country. This weekend they even brought in the myth of
Nixon stepping down for the good of the nation. Today, the called for a
stoppage
in the name of stock market stability. Although 7 out of 10 Americans feel that
it's more important to be accurate than swift, this feeling may erode by next
weekend. What we're looking at, then, is the probable start of an illegitimate
presidency. Although more people say they would accept Gore than Bush,
80%-70%, the Bush figures are high enough for them to take the heat. What we're
looking at, then, is a good chance that the next president will came into power
without a popular vote majority and without a legitimate electoral college
vote,
based on the anticipated decision of a key Bush backer to reject the hand count
of more than enough Florida votes that would have given the electoral college
vote to Al Gore. One would think that the American people would resent having
the decision of the next president taken out of their hands and placed into the
hands of a key member of the Bush campaign team. Chances are good that if Bush
becomes president under these circumstances, he'll spend the next four years
under a cloud of his own making. --Politex, 11/13/00

                                           WHO IS KATHERINE HARRIS?

Associated Press, 11/13/00... Harris No Stranger To Controversy

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- A Harvard-educated blueblood from one of
Florida's wealthiest
families, Secretary of State Katherine Harris is no stranger to
controversy. She's been
investigated for campaign finance violations and criticized for spending
state money
jetting around the world, spending up to $500 a night for hotel rooms in
Washington. She's
also been one of George W. Bush's most prominent political supporters,
campaigning for
him in Florida and elsewhere. Harris placed herself in the middle of the
increasingly
partisan struggle over Florida's 25 electoral votes Monday with her public
announcement
that all 67 counties are required by law to wrap up their recounts by 5
p.m. Tuesday. She
sits as one of six elected members on the Florida Cabinet, which with Gov.
Jeb Bush, decides
on issues ranging from the mundane to the momentous affecting schools, the
environment
and other statewide concerns. As secretary of state, Harris oversees
elections, the state's
historical and cultural resources and also keeps the state's public
records. She makes
$106,000 a year. ``For what is probably the easiest of the Cabinet
positions, she's made it
awful difficult,'' said state Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch. In her
first two years
on the job, Harris spent $100,000 in Florida tax dollars on foreign trade
missions to places
like Barbados and Brazil as well as the Sydney Olympics. Her travel
expenses were
significantly higher than the other five Cabinet members and three times
more than Gov.
Jeb Bush. Harris defended her travel, saying she has brought millions of
dollars of
international trade to the state and established cultural ties such as a
cooperative ballet
between the state and Mexico. Sandra Mortham, the incumbent who lost to
Harris in a
nasty Republican primary in 1998, said every secretary of state emphasizes
their own key
areas of concern. ``For me, it was elections, and it was to get the
elections online and on
the Internet,'' Mortham said. ``Katherine has decided that she wanted to
move the office
more into the area of international relations.'' Ben McKay, Harris' chief
of staff, said
Harris was too busy with Monday's court hearing to return calls. In 1994,
Harris became
implicated in a campaign finance scheme surrounding her first run for
public office. She
was forced to reimburse $20,000 after state investigators discovered that
employees of
Riscorp, Inc., an insurer, were improperly reimbursed for their
contributions to her 1994
Senate campaign. She said she had no knowledge that anything was amiss with the
contributions. This year, Harris approved a taxpayer-financed public service
announcement featuring retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, a Bush ally, urging
Floridians to vote. She received criticism for spending the public's
$30,000 to finance the
ads, which aired during the final month of the presidential campaign. McKay
said Harris'
office asked Schwartzkopf, as a prominent Floridian, to make the ads months
ago, after
Gloria Estefan and Tiger Woods turned down the request. Harris, 43, earned
a degree in
history from the all-female Agnes Scott College in Georgia, received a
master's degree in
public administration from Harvard and she studied art and Spanish in
Madrid, and
philosophy and religion in Geneva. Her grandfather, citrus magnate Ben Hill
Griffin,
served as a longtime legislator. He was also a friend of former state
Republican Party
chairman, Tom Slade, who hand-picked Harris for her Senate run. Her cousin,
J.D.
Alexander, is a state representative. The Cabinet job, one that has been
largely
ceremonial, is being abolished after Harris' current term, which expires in
January 2003.
Harris, who is married to businessman Anders Ebbeson, listed her net worth
as more than
$6.5 million as of December 1999, according to her latest financial disclosure.

Associated Press, 11/1/98... TALLAHASSEE - Katherine Harris was not
spoiling for another
political street fight after a bruising Republican primary, but that is
what Democrat
Karen Gievers is trying to give her in the secretary of state race. Harris,
a state senator
from Sarasota, scored a stunning victory in the Sept. 1 primary by soundly
defeating
incumbent Sandra Mortham after the Republican women exchanged ethical
charges and
counter-charges. Gievers, a Miami lawyer, has picked up where Mortham left
off, with
more questions about Harris' involvement in a campaign contribution
scandal. She also
has criticized various Senate votes by Harris, including her support of a
suspended voter
fraud law and a vetoed $50 homeowner tax rebate. Harris, the granddaughter
of late citrus
and cattle baron Ben Hill Griffin Jr., is not responding in kind this time.
"I don't have
anything to say against Karen," Harris said, instead touting her background
in history,
art, business and government. "It's as though I've stumbled into the
culmination of
everything I've worked on all my life." The secretary of state, paid
$106,870 per year, is
responsible for historic and cultural affairs, corporation charters and
elections. The
secretary also sits on the Florida Cabinet that, with the governor,
oversees agencies
dealing with the environment, education, and driver licensing, among other
matters.
Gievers counters with her background as a lawyer, mother, grandmother,
children's
advocate and insurance commissioner candidate, but that's not all. "I am
the only one in
this race who has no history of taking illegal contributions," Gievers
said. "I am the only
one in this race whose campaign staff has not been named as an unindicted
co-conspirator." That's what a federal grand jury called the manager of
Harris' 1994
Senate campaign after Riscorp, a Sarasota insurance company, gave Harris
$20,293 in
illegal contributions. One Riscorp official went to prison and others got
probation for
illegally reimbursing employees for contributions to nearly 100 candidates.
Prosecutors,
however, said candidates were unaware of what was going on. During the
primary, Harris
symbolically returned her contributions by donating an equal amount to a
state fund to
combat voting fraud. "This story's over and it shouldn't be an issue,"
Harris said. Gievers
also criticized Harris for sponsoring legislation Riscorp sought. Harris
said her bill helped
all Florida-based insurers, not just Riscorp, by allowing them to offer the
same discounts
as out-of-state companies. Gievers blamed Harris and other lawmakers for
restricting
absentee voting after a ballot fraud scandal in the Miami mayoral race. The
law was
suspended when the U.S. Justice Department found it discriminated against
minority
voters. "The bill has problems," Harris acknowledged. "I did vote for it
because I thought
we had to address the fraud." She promised to work with lawmakers to
correct the
problems.

Since Republican Seminole County has established that such decisions are
prefectly legal
in Florida, having engaged in such a count the other day, and since we are
three days
from the Florida state deadline for finishing the recount, there's little
doubt that any
attempt to legally prevent such hand counting from taking place is an
attempt on the part
of George W. Bush to steal the presidency by negating the will of the
people. If the
mainstream newspapers and the television talking heads back him on this
today, and you
know well enough from experience how to determine that, we will then be at the
beginning of a profound Constitutional crisis, because a majority of
Americans will not
stand for it. I sincerely hope that Mr. Bush thoroughly understands the
implications of
what he is doing. However, his stunning lack of insight into the philosophic
underpinnings of justice and of government in the past, coupled with the
well-documented
arrogance and single-mindedness of both he and those around him, do not,
I'm sorry to
say, bode well. --Politex, 11/11/00

"The bourgeoisie turns everything into a commodity, hence also the writing
of history. It is in its nature, a condition of its existence, to falsify
all commodities: it falsified history. And the version of history which is
most highly paid is that which is best falsified for the purposes of the
bourgeoisie."

F. Engels, Notes for a history of Ireland

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
--John Benfield