Politics Plus

Joe LIEberman and other Republican fear mongers just like him are ranting on that the Crotch Bomber should not have a civilian trial.  In a decision timed perfectly to demonstrate just how foolishly these Republicans are acting, a US Appeals Court proved that civilian courts can manage trials for terrorists.

A US appeals court upheld the conviction and life sentence of Zacarias Moussaoui for complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected claims by US lawyers for Moussaoui — the only person charged in the United States in the attacks that claimed nearly 3,000 lives — that his guilty plea and sentences on six criminal conspiracy counts were invalid.

It also struck down their efforts to refer the case back to a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, where he pleaded guilty in 2005 of conspiracy in the suicide hijackings of passenger planes that crashed into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

"We affirm Moussaoui’s convictions and sentences in their entirety and deny his motion to remand," the three-judge panel said in its ruling.

The court decision took place amid intense debate over whether terror suspects should be tried in civilian US courts or in specially designed military tribunals known as military commissions.

Republicans and some of President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats have blasted his administration’s decision to try a Nigerian accused of trying to bring down a US-bound jetliner on Christmas Day.

Lawmakers also have pushed back against the White House’s plans to transfer five accused 9/11 plotters — including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to New York for trial in US federal court.

Moussaoui’s attorneys had asked that their client’s sentence and conviction be remanded because his constitutional rights were violated and the government had failed to provide classified evidence that could have been used for his defense.

But Justice Department lawyers argued that the judge presiding over the trial ensured that Moussaoui, a French national of Moroccan descent, understood his rights.

"Moussaoui claims that the district court failed to inform him of the nature of the charges and ensure that he understood them," the appeals court said in its 78-page opinion. "We disagree."

After dodging the death penalty during a months-long trial in the Alexandria court, Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison. The court of appeals upheld that sentence.

"We find it significant that Moussaoui never sought to rescind the admissions he had just made, nor to withdraw his guilty plea during the nearly year-long period that elapsed between his plea and the conclusion of the sentencing proceeding," the appeals court judges wrote.

Moussaoui, who later recanted his testimony only to claim he was part of another Al-Qaeda plot, is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement at a supermaximum security prison in Colorado…

Inserted from <Alternet>

We seem to have no difficulty imprisoning him here either.

The GOP idiocy on this issue keeps ramping up.  here’s Rachel Maddow.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On this story, big thanks to RJ of The Global Glass Onion for emailing this story to me.  Visit him when you have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time to read. 😉

Oregon is quite progressive in many ways, especially where green energy is concerned.  It is quite disappointing when corporate pigs find loopholes to profit at the taxpayers’, not to mention the planet’s, expense.

When Oregon started handing out jumbo tax subsidies for renewable energy projects two years ago, one of the biggest beneficiaries was also one of the world’s richest corporations — Walmart.

No, the retail giant hasn’t branched to solar panels or wind turbines.

Instead, Walmart took advantage of a provision in Oregon’s Business Energy Tax Credit that allows third parties with no ties to the green power industry to buy the credits at a discount and reduce their state income tax bills.

State records show Walmart paid $22.6 million in cash last year for the right to claim $33.6 million in energy tax credits. The cash went to seven projects, including two eastern Oregon wind farms and SolarWorld’s manufacturing plant in Hillsboro. In return, Walmart profits $11 million on the deal because that’s the difference between what it paid for the tax credit and the amount of its tax reduction.

The loser in the transaction is Oregon’s general fund — which pays for public schools, prisons and health care programs — because the state is out the full $33.6 million in tax revenues.

Walmart isn’t alone. An analysis by The Oregonian shows Costco and U.S. Bank, which also rank among the nation’s top 200 wealthiest businesses, have made millions by buying up energy tax credits to cut their Oregon tax bills. Dozens of other companies and hundreds of individual Oregon taxpayers also have cut their tax bills by buying up the tax credits

The practice, known as "pass-through," has become a popular, nearly risk-free way for profitable corporations and high wage-earners to avoid paying taxes in Oregon. But it also has become one more target for critics of the green energy subsidies, which spend state tax dollars to attract low-carbon industry and jobs to Oregon.

"It’s so convoluted," says Eric Fruits, an adjunct economics professor at Portland State University who has studied Oregon’s energy incentives. "You’ve got all these dollars swirling around. Everyone is trying to grab them as fast as they can."

The pass-through option "turns what would otherwise be an incentive to make energy investments into a windfall that may not have anything to do with energy," Fruits says.

Program under fire

For years, Oregon has subsidized renewable energy and energy conservation projects by granting tax credits, which can be used as a dollar-for-dollar reduction on state income tax bills. The pass-through practice was put in place in 2001 as a way to allow government agencies and nonprofit organizations to take advantage of the subsidies. Since those groups don’t pay state taxes, the credits are worthless unless they can be sold to a third party.

The ability to sell the credits also allowed start-up companies with no Oregon tax liability to leverage upfront cash for their green energy projects.

The tax credits, known as BETC, or "Betsy," have come under increasing fire this year because the cost to taxpayers skyrocketed. It went from about $10 million in 2007 to an estimated $167 million in the 2009-11 biennium at the same time the economic recession hammered other areas of the state budget.

A previous investigation by the newspaper showed state officials intentionally downplayed the estimated cost of the program before the 2007 Legislature voted for substantial increases to the maximum subsidies. The newspaper’s latest analysis also found:

Walmart, Costco and U.S. Bank, which top the list of energy credit buyers, shelled out a combined $67 million to avoid paying $97 million in Oregon income taxes.

Walmart and others are making money on projects that were closed, went belly up or never produced the energy or energy savings they initially claimed.

Out-of-state corporations and others looking for tax breaks are claiming an increasing share of the money that is supposed to pay for clean energy and conservation…

Inserted from <The Oregonian>

I wish I could claim to be planning to boycott WalFart over this, but I have already been boycotting them for over ten years, because of the way my tax dollars pay for food stamps for their underpaid employees and because they have done more to drive US manufacturing overseas than any other entity.

I hope that Oregon will continue  BETC, with added safeguards to prevent exploitation by corporate profit-mongers so unethical that they would fleece their own grandmothers for a nickel.

The GOP and Faux Noise correctly understand that their lock-step, goose-step followers are sheeple.  The teabaggers are the biggest fools of all.

TPM Media’s Zachary Roth reported earlier in the week that the political action committee that organized the Tea Party Express — Our Country Deserves Better PAC — funneled almost two-thirds of its spending from July to November back to the political consulting firm from which it was spawned, Russo, Marsh, and Associates. More than $850,000 of the money the supposedly grassroots PAC collected went to the firm of GOP political operatives who ran it.

For those who may have forgotten, the Tea Party Express was the faux-grassroots operation that Fox News hopped aboard in late August, after the network’s promotion of the health care town hall meeting disruptions but before they started flogging the 9-12 protest. (It’s so hard to keep Fox’s political activism straight!) It was a nationwide bus tour organized by a political action committee whose mission is to oppose President Obama and other Democrats; with a pedigree like that, how could Fox resist?

Fox News heavily promoted the Tea Party Express; the Our Country Deserves Better PAC even used Fox’s promotion in a fundraising email. Then Fox’s Griff Jenkins hit the trail with the Express, following that bus around the country, throwing journalistic integrity aside as he declared its riders "the America that Washington forgot."

But somehow, Jenkins missed out on the real story: how loyal tea-party-goers were separated from their hard-earned cash, which was funneled to fat cat Republican political consultants… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Alternet>

So, to you teabaggers out there, how does it feel to be the pawns of Faux Noise and the GOP?  Wake up!!  You’ve followed their propaganda hook, line, and sinker.  Make the effort to do your own research, check your facts, and learn what’s really going on.