ETS! Regrets Error, Return of Old Guard

In the June 7, 2007 issue of the publication Eat the State!, your article, "The Great School Hoax" reported false information about Schools First.

You stated--incorrectly--that Schools First "transferred" excess campaign funds ($70,000) to the group, Appleseed. I would like to state that Schools First has not transferred any campaign funds to Appleseed nor has a donation of any size been suggested or requested by Appleseed from Schools First. Information on the expenditures of Schools First is available to the public through PDC reports.

Schools First takes our responsibility to donors and individuals who contribute to our campaigns very seriously so I request that a correction of this false information be published in the next issue of Eat the State!

Thank you,

Betty Hoagland,

President, Schools First

G.P. replies: We received the donation information through a Schools First Executive Board member--who should have been in a position to know--who believed the Executive Board had authorized the donation. That person has since acknowledged being mistaken. ETS! regrets its error.

The main point of the article, however, stands: a number of people associated with the disastrous pre-2003 School Board and the downtown business community, including several leaders of Schools First, have been closely associated with a slate hoping to regain control of the Seattle School Board in this fall's election. We'll have more on this in our primary endorsement article in our August 9 issue.

Cheney's Childhood

Sorry to bug you, but I just thought it would be interesting to hear what Cheney's childhood was like. We know what Bush's was like, but nobody seems to talk about the real president's childhood. Seems like it might explain some things. Do you know of any journalist who has asked about Cheney's younger years? If you've already reported on this, or know of someone who has can you clue me in?

Thanks,

Noah, Seattle

G.P. replies: From the Wickedpedia biography: "Born January 30, 1941, in Lincoln, Nebraska, to an itinerant cattle rustler father and a mother addicted to an early precursor to methamphetamine. Abandoned at an early age by his parents after a string of trailer park incidents in which he tied firecrackers and bottle rockets to the tails of neighborhood cats. Little Richie Cheney survived as a street urchin by kidnapping smaller children, at first killing and eating them before discovering that it was more lucrative and satisfying to sell them into white slavery, Using the network of personal connections he thus developed, and admitted at age 17 to Harvard Law School by falsifying transcripts and threatening to skin alive the wife of the Dean of Admissions, Cheney quickly became the toast of the East Coast political establishment for his intelligence and moral clarity..."

Example #8,215: George W Hates Democracy

Last October, President Bush surreptitiously signed into law new security legislation which allows him to declare martial law at any time. Nobody in the mainstream media seems to have noticed this law, which supersedes the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the only U.S. criminal statute to outlaw military operations directed against the American people.

The new John Warner Defense Authorization Act allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

Detention camps for citizens rounded up as "undesirables" are already being constructed by Halliburton and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to the Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International.

This law in effect opens the way to dictatorship. Only one more piece of legislation would have secured an absolute dictatorship: a clause abolishing the 22nd Amendment which prohibits the President from serving more than two terms. But so many Amendments (habeas corpus, for example) have already been suspended since the passing of the Patriot Act and other anti-terror legislation, why not another one? A state of emergency can justify anything.

The oldest democracy in the world may soon be no more. Where are you, Paul Revere?

--Clive Leeman

[Note to the editor: The main source for this letter is, Toward Freedom - Bush Moves Toward Martial Law Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" ( H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006.]