Organizing for America | Real-time Obama Active Response

Real-time Obama Active Response

Real-Time Obama Active Response (ROAR) is not a playhouse. This group is meant to take the Obama Rapid Response's activities to a higher level by recruiting ONLY pre-screenned Obama supporters who are willing to adher to its terms of reference. We are supporters who have either proved our status through financial contributions to the Obama campaign; made donations in kind that can be verified; campaigned or canvassed locally and nationally for Obama; participated in the "Vote for Change" voter registration exercise; made phone calls for Obama or made some other verifiable contribution to the campaign. If you do not fall within any of the categories above, then you may be a new Obama supporter joining with recommendation from Obama HQ or another existing member of ROAR. We are not trying to exclude people from being actively engaged for Obama; we're simply trying to make sure that the ROAR is reserved for the purpose for which it is created: real-time, proactive actions and responses online in order to push the Obama message to the widest audience. We focus on proactively planning strategies to counter negative information being spread by Obama's opponents or by the media, while proactively spreading his message through the Obama website blogs on MyBO, liberal and conservative blogs like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Politico, etc., and the big print and audiovisual media online outlets (New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Tmes, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, FOXNEWS.com. ABCNEWS.com, etc. We ALERT members whenever we suspect that there is negative news coming out somewhere, and summon everyone to ACTION so that we can counter the negativity and replace it by Obama's positive message. We do NOT use this group to argue on persoal matters and fake issues, and THIS IS NOT A DEBATE FORUM. If you are not willing to participate in an action when alerted to do so, then simply ignore it and let those who are willing to fight go on. If you totally disagree with that particular cause, with logical reason, then either reply directly to the originator of the ALERT or call to ACTION, not to the whole group. Or, if you prefer, contact the Group Administrator so that the message can be forwarded to all after approval. The bottom line is that this group has only one purpose: fight negative information against Obama, and help spread his positive message. It is not a forum to discuss strategy; it is not a forum to speculate on Veepstakes; there are other groups for those other issues. THIS IS NOT A CHAT ROOM; THIS IS THE "ROAR!"

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Book Report: "Working Class New York," by Joshua Freeman

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 25th, 2009 at 3:59 pm EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

The narrative in "Working Class New York," grows less interesting along with the declining labor movement it chronicles.

That's no criticism. After all, Joshua Freeman did not write a novel, rather penned an important nonfiction and academic effort that tells the story of New York through its workers.

"Working Class New York," is wonderfully done and demonstrative, at every turn, with the author's passion for his subject.

But, for labor enthusiasts, the end can't match the beginning for excitement.

In the early chapters, the poesy of labor reigns as the Hatters, Printers, Furriers, Elevator Operators, Milliners, Bakers and Tugboat workers, representing a rainbow of crafts and productive industries, bring the world's mightiest city to a halt through mass strikes driven by the underlining goal of reorganizing society itself.

Freeman's analysis of New York's economic structure, and how it created a textured union movement unequaled in the rest of the country, is fascinating and as much a love letter to the unions as to Gotham itself.

Indeed, the author frequently asserts that the city's best face was the lined countenance of the laborer or craftsperson enlightened by their recognition of a shared destiny, on the shop floor and front stoop, with similarly situated souls.

"Working Class New York," meticulously follows the labor movement's progress and retrenchments, starting with its halcyon days in the post-war 1940s.

It makes no bones about the powerful impetus communist politics played, and the subsequent loss of energy that coincided with the reds being chased out of American labor.

Freeman illustrates how the union movement reflected changes in the city as it lost manufacturing jobs and embraced the financial and service-based industries.

His mapping of municipal unionism's rise has less of a workerist flavor and more of what the departed Allan Bloom called the "Nitzscheanization of the left," as ethnicity and cultural issues consumed unions' internal power struggles and drove their industrial strategies.

And the book details how the decline of labor in New York reflected its nationwide losses as the country grew more individualistic and market-oriented in the 1970s and '80s.

Freeman's chapter on how financial types used The Big Apple's fiscal crisis in the late 1970s to undermine and rollback the unions' hard-earned, and unique urban social democracy, is must-read for anyone interested in those dynamics affecting the American workplace for nigh on a generation now.

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On Obstruction

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 21st, 2009 at 3:30 am EST

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Saturday's Senate debate has as much to do with Republican obstruction as it does with health care.

The Republican strategy of arresting any progress on the country's problems, of suppressing the will of voters who elected President Barack Obama and a attendant Democratic congressional majority, has begun to garner attention.

Which is why this post will be written more by other writers than the highway scribe, whose intention is to extend their reach and blow off a little steam at the same time.

Like Social Security, the weekend, paid vacations, and health care reform, the first volley came from the far left of the American spectrum in the form of a Nov. 11 "Washington Post," piece by Harold Meyerson.

In the "Do-nothing Senate" the one-time "L.A. Weekly" essayist referred to that body as "dithering heights."

That's pretty good and demonstrates how you need a sense of humor to make your ideology go down a little easier.

Meyerson noted that a few weeks ago, the Republicans thrice filibustered a measure to extend unemployment insurance. Once they relented, the measure passed 98-0.

"Just flexing their muscles, mind you," he wrote. "Establishing a new normal. If we have anything to do with it, nothing moves."

Indeed.

The filibuster, as we know only too well now, is an endless stream of B.S. meant to bury a bill under the Senate's terms of unlimited debate. It was not always thus. At the beginning, under rules drafted by none other than Thomas Jefferson, a senator was allowed to "move the previous question" and end floor discussion.

But Aaron Burr, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton and came to personify American infamy (except for Gore Vidal), got that rule stricken and the filibuster was born. Its use was nil at first, but grew over the years.

During the Bush II debacle, Democrats used it with greater frequency, but typically infuriated their radicalized supporters with an urge to cooperate and get things done.

Under Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell (pictured), the thing has taken on a life of its own, since voters so reduced his caucus that filibusters are all he can use for leverage.

And use it McConnell has.

As Meyerson pointed out, "Unless you can get a 60-vote majority to end debate, all major bills (and some minor ones) are dead in the water."

He left out political and judicial choices, but on Nov 16, Michael Savage of the "Los Angeles Times," picked up on the meme, detailing a disparity in the judicial appointments made by his predecessor over the same time-period Obama has been in office.

"So far," Savage wrote, "only six of Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have won approval. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 28 judges confirmed in his first year in office, even though Democrats held a narrow majority for much of the year."

The point being Democrats recognize the president's prerogatives, even when he garners less votes than his opponent and the Supreme Court shuts down a recount in a state governed by his brother (making him president).

On Nov. 17, one day later, the "New York Times" joined the chorus in an editorial generically entitled, "Obama's Judicial Nominations."

While noting the president has been tentative, the anonymous editorialist observed that Senate Republicans bear the blame on the confirmation side by, "doing their best to drag things out."

On Tuesday, a crack in the armor appeared over Obama's nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the U.S. Seventh District Court of Appeals.

The gentleman, who hails from a paternal line of Methodist ministers and enjoys the support of home-state Republican Senator Richard Lugar, apparently ran afoul of "conservative activists," because he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union before joining the bench.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demurred in respecting the president's choice, saying "a common DNA" ran through Obama appointees in the form of an "ACLU chromosome."

And they say Republicans are "anti-science."

They tried to filibuster the nomination and, in the words of the "Washington Post's"Dana Milbank, got "Filibusted."

Which is pretty good, too.

His piece does a great job of detailing the suddenly changed views of Republicans who, just a few years ago, likened Democratic filibusters to obstruction.

By November 19, the big boys were taking a wider view of the filibuster phenomenon.

"The Washington Post's" E.J. Dionne came out with the "The GOP's no-exit strategy," which warned that it is "time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machievellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit."

On November 22, "The Post's" Fred Hiatt got into the act, further fleshing out the ramifications of what the "New York Times'" Charles Blow referred to as "the Republican's surprisingly effective obstructionist strategy."

Hiatt noted that, "more than a year after his electoral triumph, President Obama has filled only 55 percent of Senate-confirmed slots in his government. He has nominated few judges, won confirmation for fewer. The principal item on the agenda of the unions that went all in for him, labor law reform, is on hold. Almost everyone agrees that America's immigration laws are broken, yet no fix is in sight. Long after the collapse of our financial system, new systems of regulation have yet to emerge. There is no discernible trade policy."

Hiatt's point of departure was what all this looks like to friend and foe alike overseas. And what it looks like is that American democracy is in paralysis.

The Republicans, the party of flag-wrapped patriots, care a lot about America's image, but not so much as they do about regaining power. And they show no shame in their effort to do it.

For example, in "Help in Battling the Big Boys," highwayscribery lauded the efforts of Democrats, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut in particular, for proposed legislation that would prevent credit card companies from imposing the arbitrary interest rates and fee increases they're dumping on customers before the new law capping such things takes effect.

But in "A Gift to Credit Card Companies," the "New York Times" reported that Sen. Thad Cochran of (R-Miss.), blocked a vote on the bill, "in yet another act of obeisance by Senate Republicans to the banking and credit card industries."

Thanks Thad.

"The Times" editorial on the judicial nominations noted that, "In March, every Republican senator signed an outrageous letter to the White House warning that they would filibuster any nominee from their home states if they did not approve the choice in advance."

That the Republican caucus is "outrageous," is not the point here. It's that "every" Republican senator signed the piece of trash.

Democrats have never enjoyed such lock-step discipline and as Meyerson and Dionne pointed out, "Blue Dog" or "centrist" or "spineless" Democrats (whatever you want to call them) are playing an important role in all of this.

Dionne said Republican use of the filibuster is making the majority look "foolish, ineffectual and incompetent." Moderate Democrats, by making their own narrow interests paramount on crucial matters like health care reform and climate change, "will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation."

The balky Democratic senators are not only betraying their own party, Myerson wrote, but simultaneously making a mockery of majority rule.

If they are "comfortable with the idea that elections shouldn't have consequences, they should say so publicly. If not, they should let the debate begin."

The word is out. Spread it around. Let's see what happens.

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Letter to Lieberman: America is a Public Option

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 13th, 2009 at 2:07 am EST

Also listed in: 10 groups

Nov. 13, 2009

Senator Joseph Lieberman
706 Hart Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Sir,

Recent news that you planned to support a Republican filibuster if the health care reform bill contained a "public option" was very disconcerting to me.

After all, as a life-long Democrat, I voted for yourself and Vice President Gore in the 2000 election. I remain convinced that it was an election of which you were robbed, setting in motion eight years of environmental degradation, preemptive war, and the abuse of our most cherished values and institutions.

All of which makes your choice of allies in this matter of the public option more perplexing. Their party filed the successful lawsuit to enjoin votes from being counted in Florida and deliver the presidential election to George W. Bush.

Your name was subsequently reduced to use in a trashy sobriquet on placards waved by rabble outside Mr. Gore's residence reading "Sore-Loserman."

I understand you've since endured some rough handling by Democrats over issues related to the Iraq war. All I can say is, you're entitled to your independence so long as you are willing to take the resulting heat.

Ours, since the debacle of Vietnam, has been the party of peace. When you decide upon hewing to a different path, the ensuing battle is of your making and not the Democratic Party's.

And for all that, you caucus with the Democrats through whom you reached your current status. They, in turn, were able to consolidate a filibuster-proof majority with your adherence.

The Republican Party is bent on defeating President Obama at any cost. Siding with them is no way to settle grievances most of us thought were smoothed over when you maintained your chairmanship of a Senate committee in spite of your support for Sen. John McCain in November 2008.

There is an amorality in your pledge to back a filibuster threatened by the party that denied you the vice presidency.

There is, senator, no two-thirds vote requirement for a measure's enactment by the Senate. Bills pass with the majority's blessing. Abuse of the filibuster has created an unfortunate state of affairs and gummed-up the nation's business, while giving a rump and regional party greater leverage than its reduced voting base warrants.

Your support of the filibuster on a matter of national importance, not parochial concern, diminishes the traditions of an institution to which you have dedicated a goodly portion of your efforts as public servant - the United States Senate.

As for the public option, the respected magazine "Miller-McCune" reports that only 10 percent of Americans could utilize the feature as presently constituted in the proposed legislation.

I'd be one of them, senator, and resent your single-handed efforts to deny me the opportunity to gain a modicum of health and economic security, through a parliamentary maneuver.

If you want to oppose reform through your vote in the Senate, that's your business, although I would disagree with that act. However, supporting a filibuster that prevents health care reform from reaching the Senate floor would be a move both anti-democratic and not unlike the lawsuit that kept Florida from doing a proper ballot count in 2000.

An issue such as reform deserves a full airing in the nation's representative bodies, not some cheap, short-circuit shutdown.

I understand that Connecticut, your home state, has a high concentration of insurance companies and your are bound, in part, to represent their interests. But as the same article noted, by 2019, 168 million Americans will likely receive coverage through their employer, "no differently than they do today."

By supporting the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C), you're throwing in with their Tea Partiers' interpretation that the public option represents some government takeover of health care.

It's not, because I prefer such a takeover and know it cannot be found in the the legislation.

These insurance companies are not to my, or many other Americans', liking senator. They gouge their customers and then stick them with the burden of pursuing reimbursements for treatments duly paid for through their premiums. They are an important reason the clamor for reform has accumulated lo these many decades.

Nonetheless, your colleague Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has noted that, "The bottom line is that the public option can't really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market because private insurance companies aren't going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can't take their business elsewhere."

Finally, as a policy matter, I'm advocating for the option because over the years the public space in our country has diminished and with it, our sense of engagement with one another.

America cannot prosper as a country of infinite privacies where people cultivate "My Music" and "My Videos" folders on their personal computers while walking the streets with earphones cutting them off from any awareness of the "us" and "ours" all around them.

There must be a commons, a public place and space, a civic way of being through which Americans can venture out from their gated communities and locked doors to meet and share in the life of this country. Otherwise what is the country?

The idea of America itself is a public option.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Congratulations Mr. President?

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 10th, 2009 at 5:39 pm EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

Remember, "Congratulations to my worthy opponent?"

Now, you lose the Olympics, you lose. You win the Nobel Prize for Peace, you lose.

Today's rarified, fast-paced news environment means you can wake up on the West Coast to commentary -- from Glenn Greenwald on the left to the choir of crass on the right -- insulting their own president for winning the Nobel before you can read that he actually won the Nobel.

The "fallout" from an issue for which there should be no fallout, overwhelms the original news itself.

Everybody from Joan Walsh to Joe Gergen get to weigh-in on whether the award was deserved, conveniently shunting aside the group which does painstaking, year-round work to make the designation and, mind you, pony-up the accompanying prize money.

They work in media, you see. Don't think until they interpret it for you.

If any proof were needed (and none was) that nothing President Barack Obama does will ever placate the conservative hate machine, this latest wrinkle (and our marvelous president delivers them quickly) ought to do the trick.

Obama had the chestnuts to speak on behalf of his hometown's bid for the Olympics and the fortitude to take the hit, such as it was. The choir was loud and sour in jeering those efforts.

It was disjointed coming from guys who wear American flag ties and whistle George M. Cohan tunes in the shower.

After all, Hannity and cohorts are always lamenting Obama's failure to highlight "American exceptionalism" in his forays abroad. But what could be more "exceptional" than winning the Nobel Prize for Peace?

In other, smaller, countries, when a native citizen wins such a prize, it is naturally an occasion for universal celebration.

As a matter of fact, in other smaller countries, Obama's winning seems to have ushered in just such an occasion.

Only in his own country, where a television network and millions of dollars in conservative funding have turned the president into a big-eared, socialist, Kenyan-born object of loathing, is the party dampened.

The Nobel gift became a really great chance to criticize.

Once the party of blue-haired dowagers and genteel country clubbers, the current GOPers can't summon up the simple gentleman's grace of wishing one of their own countryman a terse congratulations.

Tell you what, with the kind of noise heard yesterday, highwayscribery will have to reject the Nobel Prize for Literature, when it comes, for his family's sake.

But Obama is made of sterner stuff than highwayscribery. Despite what his detractors say, the President works hard and did not win his prize in a vacuum.

What really galls his enemies is that Obama is what we call "a winner" and no sooner was the grave soil on Chicago's Olympian disappointment settling, when the President had provoked them again by bringing honor to their country.

The brayers might say those of us closer to reality on the political spectrum would have done much the same had George W. Bush won the award.

But he did not, which is the greater message in all of this.

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Letter to the Honduran Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 7th, 2009 at 12:33 am EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

Roberto Flores Bermudez
Honduran Ambassador to the United States
3007 Tilden St., N.W. #4 M
Washington D.C. 20008

Mr. Ambassador,

I'm absolutely sickened by press notices regarding the treatment, not only of anti-government supporters but of those who just happened to be in the way of government troops.

As I just wrote to your counterpart from Guinea, military coups do not work. Either they further enrage popular sentiment, which is always on the side of democracy, or they smother it. The latter instance entails nothing more than a country being occupied by its own army.

Unleashing these ill-prepared, and unscrupulous soldiers on middle-aged women, academics, and any poor soul trying to get home from the market is speaks volumes as to Micheletti Government's ability to lead. This is not leading, this is repression.

Reports of tanks rolling through the poor parts of the country as a way of intimidating President Zelaya's supporters is unconscionable and hints of oligarchic forces seeking to forestall a true democratic process.

If people didn't want Zelaya to run for a third term, they would have voted down the referendum. "Fixing" things with an army that brutalizes them was probably a distant preference for Hondurans of both the left and right.

Shame on the ruling junta.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Free Elliot Madison

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Before you get upset about all those Iranian protestors being run through the wringer over there, you might turn your attention to those enduring similar treatment over here.

In "Twitter-Patter Revolutions," highwayscribery drew parallels between what governments do in Iran, and everywhere else, by framing examples of the violent way our own government has treated its dissidents.

highwayscribery reached back to the murder of four students at Kent State University in the 1960s and moved onto some overzealous police enforcement at Democratic and Republican national conventions over the past decade.

Now, we've got a fresh example from the recent G-20 summit and corresponding protests in Pittsburgh.

Similar to the way authorities responded to the Twitter-Patter revolution in Tehran, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents invaded a house in Queens, New York on Oct. 1, and rooted around its entrails for 16 hours.

That's not a misprint: 16 hours.

As part of the FBI effort in overkill, agents arrested a 41-year old social worker named Elliot Madison. It is not clear what Mr. Madison has done other than participated in the coordination of demonstrations around the G-20 confab.

Last we checked, which was just a few minutes ago, that's not a crime, rather a protected civil right.

His attorney, Martin Stolar told "The Times, "There's absolutely nothing that he's done that should subject him to any criminal liability."

highwayscribery agrees.

The article is devoid of evidence this fellow did anything other than occupy an improvised e-communications bureau that helped demonstrators divine the movements of the police details bent knocking the snot out of them.

The attorney said he'll know what the charges are when the affidavit empowering the FBI to disembowel his home is unsealed.

That's another anti-democratic feature of our democracy that drives the highway scribe nuts. The sealed court document. In his real-life job as a reporter, the scribe must comb the PACER system for federal court documents and they are often sealed, which is a way of keeping them from public purview without explanation.

Explanation, we posit here, is the essence of democracy. For a government by and for the people to take an action, it must explain the action to those same people.

The point being we have a ways to go here before pointing the figure at other places.

A criminal complaint against Madison, in Pennsylvania, said he directed, "others, specifically protestors of the G-20 summit, in order to avoid apprehension after a lawful order to disperse."

Of course, whenever a government issues an order to disperse, it's lawful, so Pennsylvania authorities are belaboring a weak point.

Emerson reminds us, "A good man obeys the law not too well," as in a case like this where your constitutional right to assemble for political reasons is questioned by a bunch of meat-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos.

Meant-headed, truncheon-wielding yo-yos, by the way, hate the Constitution because of the way it makes a crime out of venting their most basic and savage urges.
So what we're saying here is the same thing we said in "Twitter Patter Revolutions" and "President Obama and The Venice Drum Circle": Countries in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

If you want to argue that there is no moral equivalent between the enforcers in Iran and those in the United States, ask those who have to breathe the spew from their teargas canisters first.

If you think highwayscribery is getting all bent out of shape over something isolated, keep in mind that on the next page, same newspaper spread, it is reported that New York City will blow $24 million -- useful in forestalling foreclosures or paying furloughed teachers -- to install an "electronic bulwark" against "terrorists" in midtown Manhattan.

Hey, we're all against terrorism right? What's the problem with that?

The problem is that "terrorists" are not the only people the forces of order will be using their new electronic toys to watch.

How do you think they found Madison and his protesting friends in Pittsburgh?

And why is highwayscribery taking potshots at the police?

Because highwayscribery wouldn't trust a policeman farther than he could throw one, and because this article, also in next page of "The Times," regarding the impunity with which officers in that once free and anarchic city operate.

Screw 'em. We're with Madison and his ilk.

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The Liberal

By Stephen Siciliano - Aug 26th, 2009 at 4:12 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

He carried his personal flaws and tragic miscues in the same way he carried the liberal credo: slightly wearied, but unyielding.

His opponents linked them seamlessly.

If the health care debate reveals anything, it is that to believe in a government conceived with the purpose of serving the people places one in the company of someone who drives a young girl off a bridge, runs, and then hides.

Together, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy and the large liberal constituency that thrives throughout this country, have trudged on, standing by tired platitudes that are no less virtuous for being time-worn and tested.

His loss is a terrible blow to Republican fundraisers, but not so much as it will be to an ungrateful and impatient people who take whatever they can get, while viewing the acts of sharing with or giving to the less-fortunate as foolhardy.

For those of us inspired and instructed by his political example, his like will not be seen for a long time, if ever.

Kennedy never saw a military intervention he liked. He taught, by his example, that such consistency is the stuff of being anti-war and pro-human, never falling for the slick trick of associating support for a missile system with a desire for peace.

Those of us who agreed with him were never disappointed - no matter how low the value of our philosophy sunk - when we awaited his lone and familiar voice to speak out with intelligence against organized and taxpayer-funded mayhem.

We were never disappointed when the corporations that run our lives, pirate our money and health, had come up with yet another new line of propaganda that succeeded by appealing to what was worst, rather than best, in the American spirit.

He was there, like a default setting; turning our helpless rage into articulate argument that we might carry forth onto the streets, into parties, and anywhere else informed public debate still percolates.

For those of us who retired at night, beaten by our own mistakes -- thrown into doubt -- Kennedy demonstrated how one picks-up and carries on.

The marvelous and masterful senator taught us that our questionable pasts and sorry records could be righted by doing one small thing tomorrow and another the day after and so on.

He taught us that our job is to get better at what we do and to not be undone by setbacks.

He did not define what it meant to be liberal because all of that came before his rise to power and fame. But Kennedy taught us what it cost to remain liberal, to endure the insults and continue the work of assisting those who need it.

Unlike his brothers, frozen in youth by martyrdom, his story encompassed the sloppy narrative that becomes all our narratives, which in the end, is the same effort at doing good while swimming against a current of so much evil.

Good bye you good Liberal.

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President Obama and The Venice Drum Circle

By Stephen Siciliano - Jul 27th, 2009 at 10:04 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

For many years, on cool, cool California nights, the Venice Beach Drum Circle has gathered at the rim of the Pacific and rendered rhythmic homage to the sun, to life, and to liberty.

Congas clip, djembes clop, drummers bang and dancing dervishes delight. Incense floats from boardwalk merchant stands and sometimes it is accented with a wisp of marijuana. A crowd of onlookers, always different, enjoys all the spontaneity under the watchful eye of ...

...the Los Angeles Police Department.

highwayscribery can attest to this Sunday night ceremony stretching back to at least 1996, but suspects the tradition dates back to the first hippies.

Frequent attendance over the years also qualify the highway scribe to unequivocally state that these folks are not bothering anybody. Quite the opposite. Carving out a small piece of the public commons for themselves the goal is establishment of a tiny bubble where tolerance and primal beats reign.

It is a charming space to be for those who share the circle's open door philosophy and even for those who don't.

The fly in the ointment is the police presence. They do not serve any protective purpose. Instead the police skulk around observing and intimidating. It has gone on for years and often, they ruin the fun, inexplicably barging in and breaking up the circle before its climactic crescendo just as the sun dips into the ocean drink leaving an orangeade sky behind.

Venice Beach is Los Angeles' Greenwich Village. Despite suffering similar ravages of gentrification, it is holding better than its more famous bohemian cousin. It residents are your usual real estate poison pills of blacks, working-class Mexicans, and dreadlocked indy freaks.

They do not participate in the ambitious race that is American life for reasons varied as their odd raiment. But last year the neighborhood was papered in Shepard Fairey's famed "Hope" poster and local activists, usually aligned with the Green Party or Che Guevara's ghost, came out strong for Obama.

Like the conservative pundits who hurled time-worn labels at Obama such as "leftist" and "socialist," they did not completely buy what the media was claiming the next president to represent.

A "The New York Times," editorial on Mr. Obama and race, noted how he has refused the role of black "exceptionalist" lecturing his people "to stop whining about racism and get on with it."

Regardless of Obama's posture on Guantanamo, detentions, the intelligence capers, and other civil rights issues, the conservatives were correct in their earliest presentiments that he was something "other."

So were the "others."

And last Wednesday. The Venice Beach Drum Circle got their reward for voting Obama in November.

That was when President Obama, a guy who thinks thrice before talking, said that a stupid Cambridge cop "acted stupidly" in its handling of a report that a Harvard professor was burgling his own home.

Of course, the upstanding and obedient who claim all American values to be their own pounced, but out at Venice, around the drum circle at sunset, the congas were getting conked a little harder.

Because the victim of police abuse in the case at hand was African-American, much of the ensuing debate has rested upon the question of race, which is fine.

But for highwayscribery, and those at The Venice Drum Circle on behalf of whom he deigns to write, it was only a "black thing," to the extent African-Americans are subject to the larger "police thing."

In America, we reserve a place for the forces of law and order that are too often, well, above the law. There is and always has been a slavish deference to the whims and desires of those we ostensibly pay to protect us.

The only exception to the habitual bending of this tropism toward all things cop is the National Rifle Association, which can beat a capitol building lined with police officers seeking some sanity in our gun laws, every time.

highwayscribery does not need to go back very far in time in a search for events that make his case. And it is worth pointing out that the only reason we're talking about this now is because the Cambridge Police Force picked on the wrong black guy.

That's because Professor Gates is a black guy with a big brain, a brain with our Constitution's Bill of Rights etched into its recesses, and a strong conviction that democracy is healthier when you question cops rather than lick their shoes.

That, of course, was his privilege. Gates took the cop on because of the firepower (intelligence and connections) he had.

But not everyone is so blessed.

Only a month ago, in San Diego, a jury acquitted a police officer who, while off-duty, got into a road-rage scrape with another driver and wound up shooting both she and her eight-year old boy.

As the current state of affairs would have it, the one who got shot was convicted and sentenced, medical problems associated with being wounded by a cop, notwithstanding.

It turns out that she was an "unsympathetic" victim, someone whom even the prosecutor trying the cop called a "butthead" in court, a person plagued with flaws we'd have never known about had Officer Frank White not taken aim at her.
And fired.

Whatever Rachel Silva's imperfections, it was Mr. White who carried the gun, who was sworn to uphold the law, and who should have gotten spanked for acting in a manner beneath the dignity of his office (or anybody else's).

Also down in San Diego, Encinitas to be exact, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Brian Bilbray's congressional seat had a residential fundraiser "upset" by the local police.

A 60-year old woman, Shari Barman, and a 62-year old activist named Pam Morgan, were both pepper-sprayed, handcuffed, and charged with the usual crimes associated with telling a cop to go and respond to a real crime.

The American Civil Liberties has said the case involves, "what appears to be a significant abuse of power by a peace officer who intruded into a person's home and reacted with unwarranted force to an unsubstantiated complaint alleging a minor infraction."

When Will Carless, an intrepid investigative reporter for the nonprofit "Voice of San Diego," requested documents from the Sheriff's Department on the investigation into Deputy Marshall G. Abbott's
meltdown, he was told to go screw.

See what we mean?

The "San Diego Union-Tribune," which never met a police raid it didn't like, was able, with the help of local "Christian" activist, to dredge up some evidence of Barman's "violent past" involving an altercation with an airport security guard in...1977.

Michael Wilson and Solomon Moore of the "The New York Times" wrote that, "The line of when to put on handcuffs is a personal and blurry one, varying among officers in the same city, the same precinct, even the same patrol car."

Some officers in the article described a degree of tolerance and the need for a thick skin in their particular line of work.

But another officer from Denver had a different take. "We're not going to take abuse," he said. "We have to remain in control. We're running the show."

Well, over at The Venice Drum Circle that they're never abusing anybody when the police come around. They might add that "control" is the provenance of free citizens until they forfeit it and note that civil society is not a "show" so there is no reason for somebody to "run" it.

It is worth noting that, in the San Diego incident, Abbott went haywire when Barman asked him why he needed her date of birth.

Seems Barman and Professor Gates hail from a similar time and generation that did not care much for the dictates of security guards and police officers with a dim view of America's claim to being a free county.

Ms. Barman's "partner," the 55 year-old Jane Stratton was also knocked down by "Wildman" Abbot.

See a pattern here?

NRA wins. Conga players, lesbians, and black people lose.

The NRA did not support or endorse Obama. Its propaganda about the meaning of his election led a guy in Pittsburgh to shoot up the town for fear our president would remove the sacred gun from his cold sweaty hands.

The conga players, the lesbians, and, for certain, the blacks, did vote for Mr. Obama. Thus elevated, he characterized a certain type of police behavior, common and accepted from the cold Northeast to the warm Southwest, in the same way they would have.

The president has not apologized. Obama has said he would have "calibrated" his remarks differently, but the sum total would have been the same.

If his hand was forced in commenting anew, and calling the policeman and the professor to a White House conversation, the victory goes to his supporters, because there Sergeant James Crowley will come face-to-face with his sloppy handiwork.

And that would be a first.

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Little Story, Big News

By Stephen Siciliano - Jul 15th, 2009 at 10:32 pm EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

Your "big" news stories confected for mainstream consumption do not always cover matters of mainstream consumption.

Sotomayor, health care, Guantanamo...a liberal's dream list of concerns blanket our Web pages and daily newspapers thanks to the change in power affected last November.

Sometimes, in the heat of it all, it is not so easy to remember that during the Bush regime Guantanamo was the particular province of media oddities such as, well, highwayscribery.

Yes, there are close votes on health care forthcoming, and frustrated minority senators sniping at a nominee assured confirmation, but the shift in agenda from Bush to Obama is dramatic enough to suggest they were two presidents of two different countries (with the same name).

As to mainstream consumption, it would have been unheard of, a year ago, that our big media outlets must needs bother themselves with such a thing as the Obama administration's efforts to restrict the use of anti-biotics in our food supply.

But lo and behold, there was Gardiner Harris's piece in the July 14 edition of "The New York Times."

Given its page 17 placement, HR 962, sponsored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) is not the biggest star in the media constellation.

But if the Michael Jackson circus taught us anything, it is that the chieftains at our networks and bureaus have no monopoly on the country's sober priorities and are as apt to lose their heads as a teenage girl at a concert of the now departed pop star.

Gardiner ledes with the administration seeking, "to ban many routine uses antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans."

One of the unsung heroes of our time, or any time, Principal Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drug Joshua Sharfstein, told the House Rules Committee on Monday that, "feeding antibiotics to healthy chickens, pigs, and cattle -- done to encourage rapid growth -- should cease."

And that's a start. From there highwayscribery would like to see the cessation of all additions to farm livestock that are not necessarily...actual food.

Slaughter's legislation would ban seven classes of antibiotics from being given and restrict the application of others to therapeutic and preventive uses.

One would have thought that's what such things were intended for in the first place.

Sharfstein, and those who hired him in the Obama administration, believe the antibiotics lead to the development of bacteria in humans for which our immune systems have no response.

The American Medical Association agrees with them.

The bad and somewhat dispiriting news is that the farm lobby is against the measure and therefore, Gardiner reports, "makes its passage unlikely."

Well, you know, that's awful.

After all, we're aware something makes us sick -- and sounds funny as an idea to begin with -- the doctors' council essentially agrees, and because the National Pork Producers Council has paid for the loyalty of enough Congress members, we've got to eat...

But all hope is not lost. There's a plan to sidestep Congressional fans of polluted food and slip the "Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007" into the health care reform bill.

That should make the President's job even easier!

Dave Warner, a spokesman for the porkmen, admits there seem to be more cases of anti-biotic resistance diseases from food consumption. But he added that there are "no good studies" tying them to the use of these substances in the production of that food.

Which may or may not be true, but wouldn't it be nice if they stopped using these things until some degree of certainty is achieved on the question?

The Pew Environment Group, the article goes on to note, is paying for some advertisements supporting the measure.

Robert Martin, a senior officer at Pew said, "Just the fact that Congresswoman Slaughter is having a hearing today is a huge step forward."

Which is somewhat the point of this post.

(You can call Slaughter at (202) 225-3615 to encourage her efforts in this area).

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A response: So far a disappointing show?

By Johnathan Waters | Advocacy4change - Jul 12th, 2009 at 7:26 pm EDT

Also listed in: 8 groups

Many of us are looking for a Tylenol solution to a problem that requires delicate precise surgery involving an open minded scalpel, sound calculated experimentation, perseverance and progressive rehab til our Nation's wellness begins to take root. The Obama administration is trying to proceed with confidence without hasty decision making. Consequently, this will prove to allow sound results for Americans now and in future, not just for tomorrow or the next day :)

However, it is going to take more than policy reform to make this work amongst all Americans; the reconstruction of the US must include spiritual reform as well. In this country as a whole, we are falling short in the fundamental mission of concerning ourselves with both the underlying best interest of others as well as ourselves. All of us will experience a recurring back set, if we rush to find the quickest solutions that only numb the core root of our Nation's problems. These problems, within our nation, existed well before the Obama Administration. We should welcome criticism, but lets us welcome justifiable criticism that advances common ground and thorough analysis that leads to lasting progress. Furthermore, criticism that is driven by a spirit that welcomes tough love and respect for human self worth and dignity; not a spirit that promotes further impulsive, stumble blocks and policy bottlenecks, selfish self interests, and negative pessimism.

In God We Trust,

Johnathan Waters

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WEEKLY ADDRESS: President Obama Highlights Tough New Consumer Protections

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Jun 21st, 2009 at 3:54 pm EDT

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THE WHITE HOUSEOffice of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL 6:00 AM ET, SATURDAY, June 20, 2009
Read More »

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Paying for Health Care Reform

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Jun 13th, 2009 at 6:57 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

$313 Billion in Additional Savings to Create a Deficit Neutral Plan... Read More »

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Health care reform is an economic necessity

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - Jun 4th, 2009 at 6:01 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

In this excellent op-ed piece, super-economist Christina Romer (one of President Obama's most trusted advisors) makes an impassionate plea for health care reform. She expalins the different options that could lead to the President's goal of universal health care, and helps the reader get a really goodunderstanding of what is really at stake. Too often, we hear that universal health care would be too costly and force the economy to suffer. That is a far right Republican talking point which has been discredited several times over, but which still survives and lives on because of the ignorance of many. This piece by Prof. Romer dispels all misunderstandings and makes the choice clear: health care reform would strengthen America's economy for the future, not hurt it...

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Obama’s Speech on National Security

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 22nd, 2009 at 6:07 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

Following is a text of President Obama’s speech on Thursday on national security issues, as released by the White House.
Read More »

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David Brooks' "Hare" Raising Spectre

By Stephen Siciliano - May 19th, 2009 at 6:16 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

If your life is the subject of a book, you may not want to have lived it.

This truth was slow in coming to the highway scribe who spends less time each year on the highway and more time on scribery. The goal is to be an artist known more for his work than his public exploits.

A matter of substance, if you will.

Lives that are worthy of a literary recounting are exceptional things. In rare cases, extraordinary biographies can consist in a litany of experiences kissed by the Gods and sun alike.

But usually, what makes for a good read are those rollercoaster rides spiked with irony, tragedy, movement, and setbacks answered with victories and then succeeded by sudden drops in fortune again.

That's how life is. The more you go for, the more you are subjected to and the vast majority prefer things even-keeled so that their life trajectory rarely becomes the stuff of bestsellers.

"New York Times," columnist David Brooks has scripted "In Praise of Dullness," which posits that the story of American business is not much told, nor well understood, by writers.

The piece focuses on recent studies regarding what makes a good corporate Chief Executive Officer.

The results favored a humdrum personality: "The C.E.O.s that are most likely to succeed are humble, diffident, relentless and a bit unidimensional. They are often not the most exciting people around."

Which is well and good and something we knew thanks to Aesop's fable, "The Tortoise and the Hare."

It is one reason (the other being money) why highwayscribery spends less time bounding through fits of international adventure and more time eating Orville Redenbacher's "old-fashioned butter" popcorn in front of a Dell.

Providing good information on running a company, should it ever come to that, Brooks runs the boat aground with his subsequent assertion that these Tortoise types demonstrate why, "people in the literary, academic, and media worlds rarely understand business. It is nearly impossible to think of a novel that accurately portrays business success."

highwayscribery would suggest Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" fits the bill, just not in the way a profit-focused guy like Brooks is looking for.

But that's neither here nor there. Our beef is with Brooks' separation of art, literature, market, and business into separate rarified environments.

An artist himself, the columnist reasons that "the market" -- that Gilded God of all pinstriped and serious folk -- demands a tortoise run the business.

What interests writers, on the other hand, is "self-expression and self-exploration."

But these endeavors are personal goals of novelists and not necessarily the subject of their work, which involves a search for, and construction of, the good yarn.

Artists are subject to markets, too. And these markets are more particular, less democratic or meritorious than anything the newly minted MBA will experience upon emerging from the Wall Street subway station

The very nature of their craft condemns writers to the tortoise's way. In a variation on the them Gore Vidal's "Palimpsest" refers to the "bovine" character of the novelist slowly masticating his cud, his subject.

Brooks, who works in Washington D.C., notes how monotone business leaders don't fare well in a place where political leaders brandish their "charisma, charm, personal skills."

But business is the story of American politics as this piece on the Employee Free Choice Act's dwindling chances, in spite of a Democratic president and majority, will attest.

Brooks' earlier March 16 piece "The Commercial Republic" suggests much the same.

For every Obama or Reagan that struts his term upon the national stage, there remains behind a Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.) or a Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), humble (maybe not so much), anonymous, and busy as bees.

The columnist perceives the Obama administration's "interposing" of artistic temperaments upon industrial management culture and fears it is unleashing "a revolution in values" damaging to American business.

But Brooks is interposing a "hare" mythology onto noncorporate types that doesn't fit well.

Every endeavor cultivates its slow-pokes, passionate in their pursuit of incremental progress, and committed to the long haul in a way Wall Street has rarely been in recent years.

So we should be alright.

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Health Care Reform: “Urgency and Determination”

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 15th, 2009 at 2:59 pm EDT

Also listed in: 9 groups

The White House: Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 Read More »

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Rush Limbaugh was the 20th Hijacker on 9-11 (Wanda Sikes)

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 10th, 2009 at 5:07 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

What a funny way to tell the truth. Except it's so true it's no longer funny... Read More »

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President Obama's Job Training Plan for the Unemployed

By N. Julio Barthson - E-Campaign Leader - May 9th, 2009 at 10:21 pm EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

President Obama is doing the right thing to take care of people who have lost their jobs and still need an opportunity to update their skills for the new economy. Education and appropriate job training are essential elements of the future modern, global economy which we must embrace. The President's plan makes dreams possible for many Americans and their families... Read More »

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Obama: The First 106 Days

By Stephen Siciliano - May 6th, 2009 at 4:13 am EDT

Also listed in: 10 groups

It's a good thing that, as a blogging outfit, highwayscribery decided to stay clear of the "first 100 days" traffic and waited patiently for the no less important FIRST 106 DAYS milepost.

On top of highwayscribery's little peep being overwhelmed by the roar of outlets both mega and minor, President Obama's ensuing stand against offshore tax havens and unequivocal nod to industrial syndicalism might have gone unremarked.

Offshore tax havens are the things that people who don't get 10-99 or 1040 forms at the end of year use to avoid paying taxes the people who get 10-99 or 1040 forms can't use to avoid the annual tithe.

Like, say, Warren Buffet.

When the Oracle of Omaha was asked by "New York Times," business columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, why his empire was structured as a conglomerate when he advised other investors to "keep it simple," Buffet responded, "We've got this ability in terms of moving money around into various opportunities without tax consequences."

Get it. WITHOUT TAX CONSEQUENCES.

Jackie Calmes and Edmund Andrews at the "New York Times," (NYT) reported that Obama's is a move which, "appeals to growing populist anger among taxpayers but that is likely to open an epic battle with some major powers in American commerce."

To quote a very unpopular former president, "Bring it on."

The new President, you see, is fulfilling a campaign promise to end tax breaks for American companies that send American jobs overseas.

John Castellani of the Business Roundtable gave the reporters a canned reaction: "This plan will reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in foreign markets, which will also crip

ple economic growth here in the U.S."

The obvious question is what is it that makes these countries "American"? You also have to wonder if other companies in other countries pay taxes and, if they do, how they compete.

Finally, while blessed with all these neat tools for avoiding taxes, why has economic growth been crippled anyway?

If the NYT reporters are to be taken at their word, Obama merely wants to fix provisions that no longer serve the original purpose of protecting multinational corporations from being taxed twice: once overseas and once by the Internal Revenue Service.

But according to the same article, in 2004, the last year for which there are figures, corporations deferred reporting earnings and wracked up tax credits that led to a paltry 2.3 percent contribution on what is supposed to be a 35 percent tax rate.

In short, they didn't come even close to paying their fair share.

the highway scribe, by the way, is still being forced to pay his.

The Obama plan has left open one big, fat loophole, according to Lynnley Browning, also of the "New York Times" (which should give you an idea of what political blogging's future will look like when all these "real" newspapers go under).

The Obama plan, apparently, doesn't do away with "transfer pricing," a concept we feel no need to explain since most of you aren't going to need it and because the outcome is essentially the same, where multinationals and taxes are concerned.

There's a pattern developing with the president, who seems to throw big punches, but them dance off into a corner when battling the big boys.

Robert Reich at Salon.com thinks the president throws a lot of stuff out there, and keeps some close to his chest, because he's trying to affect great changes in American society. More often than not, Reich believes, he will run into the same people at the negotiating table and all of these plans and provisions will serve as so many bargaining chips on its coffee-stained surface.

For example, when the American car industry started going belly-up, there were complaints from people the scribe has coffee with that the bankers were bailed out, while unions were being required to eat their contracts in most usual and inequitable fashion.

But lo-and-behold, at Chrysler Obama practically went syndicalist, which is a philosophy that believes unions, workers councils, and others cooperative labor groups are best-suited to running industrial entities.

On May Day itself, "NYT" subscribers awoke to a headline that claimed "Chrysler Files for Bankruptcy, UAW and Fiat Take Control."

True, it's not the revolutionary syndicalism preached by Pierre Prodhoun, but it's still United Auto Workers control with $8 billion in g

overnment grease for the wheels.

Or as Jim Rutenberg and Bill Vlasic, again, of "The Times" noted, "It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times..."

Micheline Maynard, of (yes) "The Times," penned "In Chrysler Deal, Union Takes Rare Front Seat," and observed that Chrysler's Chapter 11 could end up being the "Cadillac" of bankruptcies for the United Auto Workers.

Apparently Chrysler didn't have a luxury model that could make the analogy workable.

Quoted in the piece was an expert in bankruptcy restructuring of Washington-based Arent Fox saying, "This is extraordinary, truly extraordinary. I never would have thought a year ago that this would occur. These are truly unusual times."

Change indeed.

Maynard noted that the United Auto Workers is not just any union thanks to its heavy political contributions, but that's a narrow conclusion that lacks a back story.

Which is why you come to highwayscribery.

The UAW is the holy grail of democratic trade unionism in this country with a not inconsiderable reputation around the world as well. The union's dramatic history is woven into labor lore. The auto workers have cut a noble and progressive profile in countless fights since their formation by the Reuther brothers in the 1930s.

In 1986, when the highway scribe was a cub reporter, he was assigned to cover the union's national convention in Anaheim, Calif.

Now reporters are a pretty jaded lot. We've got to sift through a lot of buffalo chips to get at the truth and many events we cover are shows concocted especially for our delectation and/or distraction.

But the sight of 5,000 UAW delegates, sitting at long tables across the sprawling convention floor, rising to their feet and singing "Solidarity Forever" stamped a memory in the scribe's mind that 23 years have barely dimmed.

And that's part of what is behind this move. A progressive president standing by a blue chip labor union and assuring its members get a fighting chance rather, rather than sacrificing them to the cold and heartless logic of the marketplace.

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Cybercrime

By Ailene - May 1st, 2009 at 6:39 am EDT

Also listed in: 6 groups

From recent Blog entry....

MUST READ!!!

Are you tired of our site being attacked?

By sduncan - Apr 29th, 2009 at 6:17 pm EDT

This is a crime THESE LINKS CONTAIN COMPUTER BUGS

REPORT THIS CRIME TO IC3 I did and you should also

http://www.ic3.gov/about/default.aspx

Welcome to IC3

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C),
and the Bureau of Justice Assistance
(BJA).

IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints
regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims
of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities
of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies
at the federal, state, local and international level, IC3 provides a central referral
mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes.
read more >>

Filing a Complaint with IC3

IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes
they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant. We can best process
your complaint if we receive accurate and complete information from you. Therefore,
we request that you provide the following information when filing a complaint:

    * Your name
    * Your mailing address
    * Your telephone number
    * The name, address, telephone number, and Web address, if available, of the individual
      or organization you believe defrauded you.
    * Specific details on how, why, and when you believe you were defrauded.
    * Any other relevant information you believe is necessary to support your complaint.

File a Complaint >>

http://www.ic3.gov/about/default.aspx

Spam

    With improved technology and world-wide Internet access, spam, or unsolicited bulk
    email, is now a widely used medium for committing traditional white collar crimes
    including financial institution fraud, credit card fraud, and identity theft, among
    others. It is usually considered unsolicited because the recipients have not opted
    to receive the email. Generally, this bulk email refers to multiple identical messages
    sent simultaneously. Those sending this spam are violating the Controlling the Assault
    of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, Title 18, U.S. Code,
    Section 1037.

    Spam can also act as the vehicle for accessing computers and servers without authorization
    and transmitting viruses and botnets. The subjects masterminding this Spam often
    provide hosting services and sell open proxy information, credit card information,
    and email lists illegally.

    If you believe you may have fallen victim to this type of scam and wish to report
    it, please file a complaint
    with us.

http://www.ic3.gov/about/default.aspx

IC3 Mission Statement

IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints
regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime. The IC3 gives the victims
of cyber crime a convenient and easy-to-use reporting mechanism that alerts authorities
of suspected criminal or civil violations. For law enforcement and regulatory agencies
at the federal, state, local, and international level, IC3 provides a central referral
mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes.

Significant and supplemental to partnering with law enforcement and regulatory agencies,
it will remain a priority objective of the IC3 to establish effective alliances
with industry. Such alliances will enable the IC3 to leverage both intelligence
and subject matter expert resources, pivotal in identifying and in crafting an aggressive,
proactive approach to combating cyber crime.

http://www.ic3.gov/about/default.aspx

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