Jen's Green Journal

Text of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (notice that this was given the number HB 6166 -- remove the "1" and you have the mark of the beast)

Peace Activists Beware: Homeland Security May Be Reading Your E-Mail, and Passing it on to the Pentagon

There was a very un-American piece of legislation passed last week -- you may have heard about it. It's a piece of legislation that says that the U.S. can detain any non-U.S. citizen anywhere for any reason -- without any trial, any confronting of accusers-- potentially remaining in prison with who knows why kinds of conditions and torture until death.

Those of us who are U.S. citizens are supposed to be comforted that we will be protected from this kind of law -- at least for now. I wouldn't put it past Bushco. and any neo-con that follows him to change that as well. We've seen so much that used to be unbelievable and unimaginable come to pass in the past 5 years that I simply would not be surprised to see us sink more and more toward a facist dictatorship.

What you may not know is that many Democrats joined the Republicans in passing this law -- one of them our own "Democrat" Jim Matheson. I recently got into it on the One Utah blog, where someone mentioned that voting 3rd party or independent was a vote for the Republican. Another Utah Democrat joined in the debate after I talked about the "lesser of evils" saying that we in Utah had 4 good Democrats to vote for this election -- and he named Jim Matheson as one of those good Democrats. Yes, the Jim Matheson that voted to give Bushco. war powers, the Jim Matheson that voted for CAFTA, the Jim Matheson that believe that women do not have a say what happens to their bodies after impregnation.

I knew about this legislation being passed on Friday, and I was pretty sure that Matheson had voted for it, but I put off checking to see. Part of me really wants the Dems to be the good guys -- the Greens are new and struggling with infighting, and all the other progressive parties are so small that it will be a while before there's anyone who can replace the Dems as the opposition party. For the sake of the planet and humanity, we need the Dems to be the good guys -- and I'm sorry to my friends that are Dems, but so many of them are not. Sadly, I read that Matheson supported this plain as day on Nate Smith's post on One Utah.

Here's my comment to Nate's Post:
Wow — look at all the Democrats that voted for King George’s despotic legislation. Still think I should vote for Matheson over a 3rd party? I think this highlights perfectly why voting 3rd party or independent is NOT voting for the Republican, it’s voting against bad candidates, be they Dem or Repub. A vote for Matheson is a show of support for legislation like this. If Matheson is always safe in getting the lesser of evil votes, what motivation is there for him to change the way he acts in congress?

I’m perfectly willing to vote for good Democrats — the ones that believe in peace and justice, equality and rights for all people, and of course the well being of the planet. That’s why I’ve supported Rocky and Dennis Kucinich among select others– but apparently those that stand firm in the ideal sof peace, justice, equality and rights for all people are considered far too radical left for much of the Democratic party. What is so radical about those concepts?

It's time to boot out the Rubber Stamp Congress. Vote out anyone, Dem or Repub, that rubber stamps the corrupt laws that Bushco supports. Make it clear that going along meekly with a despotic ruler will lose you your seat in Congress.

Senator Stephenson's written a blog post on S.B. 156 at the Senate Site for anyone interested in reading it.

Senator Howard Stephenson seems to be on a mission to increase the power of the legislative branch in Utah. First there's S.B. 70 of which I've written extensively about, which would give the legislature more power than the governor to determine how much nuke waste gets dumped here. The legislature already made it more difficult for citizens to decide our nuke waste fate by making the requirements citizen initiatives more difficult after the failed citizen's Initiative 1 in 2002 which would have permanently banned B & C waste.

Now there's S.B. 156, which could give the legislature the power to determine which candidates we get to vote for U.S. Senate -- how things were before the 17th amendment was added to the constitution.

From today's Deseret News:

Bennett said the 17th Amendment passed because Americans were finding two huge problems with legislative-picked U.S. senators:
      First, some legislatures — including Utah's — were spending so much time wrangling over who should be a U.S. senator that for periods of time state legislative work was ignored and no one was picked as senator — leaving those states with just one vote in the U.S. Senate.
      Secondly, "there was rampant corruption — senators were being picked because they gave $10,000 'contributions' to legislators," Bennett said. "It made what is going on nationally back here (in the U.S. lobbyist corruption scandal) seem very, very minor by comparison."

The last bit about "rampant corruption" is notable, especially with the legislature's reluctance to pass any kind of gift or lobbyist reform bills which have come up in recent years. The legislative branch in this state needs to be checked and balanced as much as the others.

A few years back there was a citizen's initiative on the ballot to block B & C level radioactive waste from being dumped in the state. It didn't have the funds to compete with Envirocare's (the ironically named company that stores the waste for profit) media campaign and the confusion on the issue caused the initiative to fail.

Legislators took offense that the public went above their heads to create law and the very next legislative session they made the already cumbersome citizen initiative process even more difficult.

Recently, Governor Huntsman had expressed that he won't okay Envirocare's proposed expansion, and there are some in the legislature that aren't too happy about that either.

From the Salt Lake Tribune's article today, "Lawmakers ponder bill on waste":

  "The announcement made some lawmakers bristle. They don't like the fact that the governor's decision can override a majority of the Legislature, which also must approve any expansion.
    At the same time, some lawmakers say they don't want to look like they are granting the controversial company special favors if they approve a bill allowing them to bypass the governor."

I'm a big believer in checks and balances. In the first instance, Utah's citizen's attempted to check the legislative branch's tendency to side with corporate power over the health of our environment and communities. Now the governor is attempting to check that, at least in this instance. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, in this and future sessions.