Maryland has been global corporate since Reagan/Clinton so we are already well on the way to this neo-liberal/neo-con capture of Maryland election/public policy. Just as with the Presidential primary with Obama pretending he was left of Hillary------Heather Mizeur has been chosen to appear left of the two raging Wall Street pols Anthony Brown and Doug Gansler.
As I showed yesterday, while Heather Mizeur pushes a few progressive bones-------she is good on environment, taking care of underserved and seniors.......what a family protecting neo-liberal Heather is according to the policies she pushes. Throw in the youth vote with marijuana and a few 'holding corporations accountable with taxes'; you have a platform that sounds progressive. As I showed with the big picture.....her goal is global corporate rule and movement of wealth and profit to the top. Neo-liberalism = totalitarianism = third world society.
Today, I will do the same taking these policy issues from Mizeur's campaign page. Please read to the bottom as I include an article on global corporate rule being totalitarianism.
THIS IS NOT HYPERBOLE....IT IS EXACTLY THE STEPS TAKEN WHEN THESE REGIMES TAKE HOLD OF A SOCIETY.
Heather Mizeur's policies:
Protecting Our Environment
Maryland’s environment is interconnected with every piece of our everyday lives. Clean air and water ensures the safety of our families and communities. Clean energy helps us combat climate change. A healthy Chesapeake Bay fuels local economies and tourism.
No studies, no fracking.
Mizeur is attached to all of the policy stances that are anti-fracking and yet.....none of them really address stopping fracking or exportation of natural gas. You can see she is putting forward the idea of caution when everything behind the scenes moves global corporations exporting natural gas and Maryland is right in the middle of it. In fact, Johns Hopkins is heavily invested in natural gas and is the driver of all that is consolidation of the energy industry in Maryland.
When politicians shout that they are calling for studies on the effect of fracking in Maryland it is just a delay tactic as all other legislation allowing it is in place. We see funding for natural gas pipelines that will carry gas to the export terminal and Port of Baltimore, we see Mike Miller posturing in saying the export terminal will happen.
WE KNOW THAT AS HEAD OF THE GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION IT WAS O'MALLEY LEADING THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL GAS EXPORTING POLICY.
If you look at media headlines you would think O'Malley and Mizeur were fighting fracking when indeed, both are aligned to move it forward. STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF FRACKING IN MARYLAND AS PROGRESSIVE????? REALLY???? The first step someone actually fighting fracking would do is demand the funding for baseline study of the Marcellus Aquifer. This needed to be done a decade ago and only needs a few million dollars to complete, yet it is deliberately neglected so that fracking corporations can operate with impunity. That baseline data is what was needed for the public to hold corporations accountable for contamination. With that data a real environmental politician would shake the data at WVA and PA fracking industry and the threats would have them drilling more conservatively. You know if Mizeur is praising O'Malley for his work in fighting fracking all the while he is leading the way on the Governors Association-----IT IS ALL PROPAGANDA.
FIRST AND FOREMOST IS THE POLICY THAT TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT (TPP) IF PASSED WILL ALLOW GLOBAL CORPORATIONS TO IGNORE ALL US LABOR AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE LAWS AND MIZEUR IS BACKING ALL POLICY MOVING TPP FORWARD.
MIZEUR'S POLICY ON FRACKING IS TO PRETEND WE ARE DOING PROTECTIVE STUDIES AS WE BUILD THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO DO IT!
No studies, no fracking Gas industry is undermining effort to study environmental effects of controversial drilling practice
During this presidential election season, we Americans may not agree on everything. But one thing we do agree on is this: Only through democracy and open debate can we hope to solve our toughest challenges as a nation.
Unfortunately, here in Maryland, that democratic process has been missing in the face of one of the biggest pollution threats our state has ever faced: hydraulic "fracking" for natural gas. Even as tap water catches on fire in neighboring Pennsylvania and earthquakes have been strongly linked to the fracking process in Ohio, the Maryland chapter of the American Petroleum Institute has been winning its efforts to shut down meaningful debate over these threats here at home. Armed with expensive lobbyists, its shocking goal has been to make sure the state does not designate funding to carefully study the potential threats posed to Western Maryland and the rest of the state from fracking.
That's right — with money and backroom access, the oil and gas industry has blocked the General Assembly from even studying the issue. I say: Enough is enough. In January, I will introduce legislation to create a statutory moratorium on all fracking activity in Maryland. This moratorium will stay in place until and unless we have a science-based review of all the safety risks involved. Once those studies are complete, the General Assembly would take a final vote on whether to go forward with this drilling practice.
In short, my legislation would guarantee that debate, facts and democracy determine the fate of fracking in Maryland. That's in contrast to the oil and gas industry approach which, to date, relies on money, lobbying and subverted democracy, all of which lead in the direction of guaranteed pollution.
The gas industry wants you to believe that fracking is perfectly safe. We've been bombarded with slick newspaper and TV ads about "clean natural gas" promising new jobs and greater energy independence. What the ads do not mention — but what the media have revealed — are the broken towns and farms and families left in the wake of this process in every state that has opened the door widely: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arkansas, Wyoming, West Virginia and others. When you drill a mile deep and inject explosives, water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals into the earth to force up methane gas, there are many consequences. Methane gets into drinking water, toxins get into rivers, industrial-scale well pads get into rural towns, and even the earth itself shakes, according to the latest estimates of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Thankfully, there are no fracking wells yet in Maryland, but the industry is pounding at our door. In 2011, as gas companies rushed in to lease mineral rights to a whopping one-quarter of the surface of Garret County alone, Gov. Martin O'Malley established a special commission to look into safety concerns surrounding fracking. The commission was tasked with reporting back to the General Assembly with a comprehensive set of studies. These studies would determine what "best practices" (if any) could prevent the fracking horrors experienced elsewhere.
The only problem is, the governor's fracking commission — of which I am a member — does not have dedicated resources to fund these studies. So last March, the House of Delegates voted overwhelmingly to attach a small fee to fracking leases in Maryland, just enough (about $2 million) to fund the necessary safety studies.
What happened next? The gas industry and its lobbyists, in a series of discreet phone calls and closed-door meetings, pressured key leaders in the Senate to keep the bill from ever coming up for a vote in committee.
So I say: Fine. If the gas industry doesn't want Maryland studying the safety risks associated with fracking, then there should be no fracking. Let's put an official, statutory moratorium in place and wait. Polling shows 71 percent of Marylanders agree that such studies are needed before drilling commences. And my legislation will be clear: Once these studies — as enumerated in the governor's June 2011 executive order on fracking — are finally funded, and they lay out the drilling methods and pollution measures needed to keep our people safe, then the General Assembly can decide to lift the moratorium and adopt these science-based standards.
Although a "de facto" moratorium on drilling has existed for the life of the proposed commission studies, as long as no statutory moratorium on drilling exists, the state remains unprotected from the influence of powerful drilling interests and potential lawsuits to force the state to issue drilling permits.
Is my proposal a radical step? Not at all. A state-level moratorium is a reasonable, methodical and thoughtful approach. What's radical is allowing a fossil fuel special interest to thrust upon us — without full democratic input — a drilling method that is associated with temblors and benzene-contaminated water in virtually every state where it's been tried.
Our state has a long history of using sound reasoning and the democratic process to make good choices. Let's continue that tradition as a new energy challenge knocks on our door.
Maryland Gov. O’Malley, the host of the DGA’s Spring Policy Conference, has attracted criticism from activists for his failure to use science to guide his decision on opening up the state to fracking.
Last April, the O’Malley-appointed Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission issued a draft report warning that fracking could have significant negative impacts in Maryland. Still, O’Malley and other Maryland leaders are pushing forward with drilling as if it is inevitable.
Opponents of fracking believe that through O’Malley’s alliance with the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), an industry group led by representatives from CONSOL Energy, Shell, Chevron, EQT Corporation and the Environmental Defense Fund, the governor is promoting the idea of industry-sponsored self-regulation. This week, Americans Against Fracking, Democracy for America and MoveOn.org will deliver to O’Malley more than 3,000 petitions urging him to ban fracking.
************************************************************
O'Malley placed himself at the head of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation just to get headlines as being environmental as he pushed to privatize the Port of Baltimore into a global shipping hub with ships tracking invasive species up the bay that will choke and kill the Chesapeake Bay.
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING AND ANYONE WHO LOVES THE BAY SHOULD BE OUTRAGED WITH THIS PORT OF BALTIMORE POLICY-----DO YOU HEAR MIZEUR'S OUTRAGE???? NO, SHE SUPPORTS THE PRIVATIZATION OF THE PORT OF BALTIMORE FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
Environmentalists slam new bay pact CBF "shocked" draft agreement ignores toxic pollution, climate change
A person walks on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. (Jen Rynda / Patuxent Publishing / January 28, 2012)
Tim Wheeler 11:21 a.m. EST, January 30, 2014 Baltimore Sun
Environmentalists are slamming a new draft Chesapeake Bay restoration agreement for failing to address toxic pollution or even mention climate change as a complicating factor in the three-decade effort to revive the ailing estuary.
********************************
This is the Maryland Public Service Commission, already heavily staffed with corporate appointments.
DO YOU HEAR MIZEUR SHOUTING AGAINST THIS?
O'Malley names energy executive to PSC
By Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun 5:50 p.m. EDT, August 14, 2013
____________________________________________
Heather also strongly supported Maryland's offshore wind program.
The only way a utility will be green is if it is kept public. As with all utilities in Maryland that are privatized as with this wind farm project, it immediately is handed to ever larger corporations and at this time most of Maryland's utilities are controlled by global corporations. Even this wind farm was handed to a global corporation for operations. Heather Mizeur supports all of these public private partnerships that make these operations not only about profit, but end up soaking the public for money through ever rising rates. I told you of Commerce Energy seeking Maryland BGE consumers to sign the new green energy surcharge created from this wind project over to them.....they are a huge West Coast energy corporation having nothing to do with green.
So, as an environmentalist I was shouting to keep wind farms public------while Heather was pushing her private partnership with a global corporation.
HEATHER MIZEUR KNOWS THAT HANDING WIND FARMS OVER TO A GLOBAL CORPORATION AND ALLOWING A WEST COAST COMMERCE ENERGY TO COLLECT OUR MARYLAND BGE SURCHARGE IS NOT GREEN POLICY.....IT IS CORPORATE AND WEALTH POLICY.
Below you see a Texas corporation charged with the development and they contracted with a global corporation for operations. Don't you just love when Texan energy corporations creating global warming are making money with the green energy movement!
WOULD AN ENVIRONMENTALIST REALLY GO TO TEXAS TO CONTRACT THIS JOB????
Massive wind farm envisioned in Somerset
By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor
An estimated 7,000 to 8,000 acres, encompassing — or including fields in — 50 to 60 farms, are involved in an envisioned $150 million “wind farm” in Somerset County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Adam Cohen, vice president of Pioneer Green Energy of Austin, Texas, who heads the company’s East Coast operations, said the company hopes to start construction in 2013.
It seems there are lots of global connections to the natural gas market setting up right here in Maryland even as Heather pretends there are studies being done! Below you see one of the 'green' corporations BGE is handing the wind farm surcharge to!
FIGHTING FRACKING SAYS O'MALLEY AND MIZEUR-----REALLY??????
Commerce Energy -Commerce Energy Group, Inc., based in Costa Mesa, California, USA, was the parent company of a wholly owned independent electricity and natural gas marketing company ...
Commerce Energy
8600 La Salle Rd,
Towson, MD 21286
Propane & Natural Gas, Gas Companies
_____________________________________
The massive frauds of last decade moved more women and children into poverty than in any period in US history. Maryland was ground zero for the subprime loan fraud----MERS operated in Mizeur's Washington suburbs. Wall Street still owes Maryland hundreds of billions of dollars at least----and I do not hear a word from Heather....she doubles-down with Wall Street. A progressive would have created a state public bank and kicked these big banks out of Maryland.
SUSPENSION OF RULE OF LAW IS THE #1 ISSUE IMPOVERISHING WOMEN AND CHILDREN. MARYLAND HAS DISMANTLED MOST OF PUBLIC JUSTICE.
Below you see propaganda at its finest. The first thing the Maryland Assembly did after the economic collapse was to defund Medicare and Medicaid and social services to a great extent. Remember, when a state defunds those programs the Federal cuts are super-sized. In Baltimore, there is a policy of shutting down social service buildings making people go to phones for service and then making sure citizens cannot get through----this is a Texas policy to kill social services to women and children. So, where does the money allotted to families unable to get Food Stamps? HEAR THAT SUCKING MACHINE???
Maryland has one of the most underfunded social service agencies and it has the most fraud of what little money gets out. Why would people care whether the poor are supported?
THIS IS WHAT MAKES BALTIMORE THIRD WORLD IN CRIME AND VIOLENCE---NO SOCIAL SUPPORT SERVICES.
Do we really want to see teenagers angry at being left with no future assaulting and stealing from the middle-class in order to survive?
HOW THIRD WORLD IS THAT...JUST SO THE RICH CAN GET RICHER.
So, when Mizeur outlines the funding and support she sends to the underserved, women, and children....she never speaks of the dismantling of public justice and massive fraud and corruption taking all this funding.
When she is not shouting that Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) will allow all labor and justice laws to be ignored-----all these labor policies will be mute as Heather works to build the TPP structures here in Maryland.
Read Heather’s plan to expand access to and increase benefits of child care subsidies.
Ensure Equal Pay for Equal Work
Provide Paid Family and Medical Leave
__________________________________________
Mizeur supporting Medicare for All while the State of Maryland seeks wavers from Medicare for years just to end it as a Federal program? REALLY?????
THIS IS PROGRESSIVE POSING AT ITS FINEST----TRYING TO USURP THE UNIVERSAL CARE ISSUE WHILE PUSHING THE MOST PRIVATE OF STATE HEALTH SYSTEMS WITH POLICY WRITTEN BY THE MOST PROFIT-DRIVEN NEO-CONSERVATIVE ORGANIZATION IN THE NATION----JOHNS HOPKINS.
All the issues around roll-out of the state health structures meant to send all public sector health plans, all Medicare and Medicaid when these programs are ended are just a screen to hide the fact that Maryland will be ground zero for the worst of denial of access to health care for 80% of Maryland citizens. This will lower life expectancy for those 80% in one generation and if you are middle-class now and affording a Silver tiered plan----you may well not be in a decade if these Affordable Care Act policies are kept.
The Affordable Care Act is a republican policy to end Federal public health and acting to consolidate/deregulate the health industry as Clinton did with the financial industry making global health corporations looking and acting like Wall Street. This time rather than impoverishing people with constant predation and fraud-----people will die from lack of ordinary care just so the rich can get richer.
THAT'S A NEO-LIBERAL FOR YOU-----WORKING FOR WEALTH AND PROFIT ON THE BACKS OF LABOR AND JUSTICE!
SAYS HEATHER MIZEUR:
Guiding Principles for Fixing Maryland's Affordable Care Act Implementation
'Politics and pride have gotten in the way of protecting families in desperate need for health coverage. It’s time for the General Assembly to step in and make it right. Emergency legislation is necessary to assure there are no gaps in coverage and that families are held harmless from out of pocket costs incurred in the wake of cancelled plans and inability to enroll in new coverage'
We know that Obama has spent his entire time in office working to finalize Trans Pacific Trade Pact (TPP) and that includes working with Bill and Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates in demanding that public health around the world and public subsidy to health care be ended. That is what TPP does. So, we know there was never any intent to protect public health by Obama and neo-liberals. We know all of the appointments to Federal health programs and to Senate Committees by Harry Reid were all pols ready to privatize and defund public health.
This is what Heather Mizeur works towards as well. All these pols and pundits shouting out for Affordable Care Act knew its goal was ending Medicare and Medicaid and public health.
Wake-up Call Resist the Corporate State
Root of Our Health Care Problems: Privatization
Patients gather outside the Virginia-Kentucky Fairgrounds for their turn to enter the Remote Area Medical (RAM) Health Expedition in Wise, Va., July 24, 2009. Photo by Paul Morse for AARP Bulletin Today
“The root of the problem is the privatization of the funding and organization of medical care.”
Consequences of the Privatized Funding of Medical Care and the Privatized Electoral Process
By Vicente Navarro, M.D.
American Journal of Public Health, Jan. 14, 2010
The current state of health care reform in the United States reveals the enormous limitations of democracy in this country, unparalleled in the western world. Why is there such a large gap between what people want from their representatives in Congress – including universal access to health care as a matter of right – and what they get?
To answer this question, we first need to look at what is happening in the U.S. medical care sector. I think it’s fair to say that what we see there is also unparalleled in the western world. Forty-seven million people are without any form of health insurance coverage (and a million more are added each year) and 102 million have insufficient coverage (and many aren’t aware of how limited their coverage is until they find out that an illness or needed test is not covered). The clearest indicator of the inhumane system of funding and organizing medical care in the United States is that 40 percent of people in the terminal stages of illness say they are worrying about how to pay their medical bills. No other major country comes even close to this level of inhumanity.
The root of the problem is the privatization of the funding and organization of medical care. Most of the funds are collected and services administered by private insurance companies. This system is rooted in the Taft-Hartley Act (the same act that forbade the working class to act as a class, by forbidding sympathy strikes that would allow workers from different employment sectors to strike to defend their class interests). Taft-Hartley shifted the responsibility for working people’s health benefits coverage to highly decentralized collective bargaining agreements, which explains the great variability in coverage. One consequence is that when American workers lose their jobs, they lose not just income but health benefits for themselves and their families. It is not surprising that the United States has the fewest working days lost to strikes. Workers are afraid to make trouble in the workplace, because getting fired could mean losing medical care for
their families.
It has been a traditional demand of the labor movement to get rid of the consequences of the Taft-Hartley Act. The demand for universality of health care, with every American having the right to access care, has been a constant in the labor and progressive movements. The majority of Americans agree with this demand, but they are unlikely to get it.
The reason for this gap between what people want and what people get is, again, privatization – a privatized electoral process, in which most campaign funding of candidates for political office comes from private sources. That private money does not mainly come (as myth would have it) from multitudes of average Americans sending in $50. The great majority comes from huge economic interests (components of the “Corporate Class”), including the insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical equipment companies; the professional associations; and other components of the medical-industrial complex. The six key members of the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), have received support from these interests. They received a million dollars each.
To further compound the problem created by a privatized electoral process, U.S. democracy is a nonproportional type of democracy— that is, the population is not represented in Congress in proportion to the size of the electorate. Each state is represented by two senators, regardless of its size, which gives enormous power (as the country’s founders intended) to rural, conservative states. The six key senators on the Finance Committee represent rural states that, in sum, include only about 3 percent of the U.S. population, and these senators have the future of health care reform in their hands.
Democracy in the United States is indeed extremely limited. The opening of the nation’s founding document, the U.S. Constitution, suggests that it is “We the People . . .” who make decisions, but it should include a footnote saying “or Corporate America.” Furthermore, those who do decide are not fully representative of the population. Still, the United States is not a dictatorship, but a democracy so tilted in favor of corporate and conservative interests that an enormous effort is required to create change. The election of President Obama seemed to be such a change and a sign of hope, because this was the trademark of his campaign. But since coming into office, he seems to have been poorly advised on his strategy for implementing the promised change. He has made several big mistakes.
OBAMA’S MISTAKES
1. An emphasis on the issue of economic viability of the system, stressing that medical expenditures (private and public) are increasing too rapidly and enlarging the federal deficit. This message has been repeated in many different ways, emphasizing that a primary goal of health care reform is to reduce the federal deficit. Most of the reforms the administration is calling for (which will, undoubtedly, cost money) will be funded by increasing the efficiency of the current public and private programs. People’s well-founded skepticism about Congress explains why so many (including Medicare beneficiaries) have expressed their concern about the meaning of “increasing the efficiency,” which they interpret to mean reducing their benefits. It is not surprising that the major opposition to the Obama reform proposal comes from the beneficiaries of these public programs, especially Medicare.
2. The concern about costs and the need to improve efficiency expressed together with an emphasis on covering the uncovered as a moral problem that needs to be resolved. This is indeed a moral issue. But, when Obama adds that he plans to pay for this expansion of coverage by increasing the efficiency of current programs, he is calling on people’s compassion, with the possibility of most people (who do have coverage) seeing their benefits reduced to take care of the uncovered. We have plenty of experience (with antipoverty and other means-tested programs) to show that compassion is not a good motivator. Solidarity (I take care of you on the condition that you take care of me) is a much better motivator.
What Obama should have done is expand and improve the Medicare Program to all Americans. This would resolve the problems of the uncovered and of everyone else. The call for a universalism mandated by government (not a mandate that individuals must buy their own health insurance, just as they have to buy car insurance) is far more ambitious (and more realistic) than a gradual path to universalism, which is likely to fail.
3. Antagonizing the left. Achieving a universal right to health care requires a huge mobilization, comparable to that which got Obama elected. For this the president needs the left. Obama could not win only by mobilizing the left, but he could not win without it. He has antagonized the left by excluding single-payer health care from the negotiating table. I can understand why he changed his mind and decided not to support the single-payer option, but I cannot understand (because it was a tactical error) why, after saying that all options would be included, he excluded the single-payer option – the alternative preferred by the trade unions, the major social movements (such as the civil rights, feminist, and green movements), and others who were the core of his support and are the grassroots of the Democratic Party. To make things worse, he is ready to eliminate even the public option, which is seen as a way of introducing the single-payer option through
the backdoor. So, it is not surprising that the left is feeling frustrated, angry, and demoralized (and did not show up at the town hall meetings).
All of this reminds me of what I saw during and after my time on the Clinton White House health care reform task force (as the “token single-payer expert”). Clinton had won the election of 1992 with a commitment to provide universal coverage. But once in office, he gave priority to reducing the federal deficit (not even in his campaign program), under pressure from Wall Street through Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and to approving the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was opposed by the trade unions and the majority of the Democratic Party. This antagonized the left of the party, and large numbers of Democratic voters stayed home in the 1994 congressional elections. The “Gingrich Revolution” was a consequence of this abstention of the Democratic grassroots. The Republicans received about the same number of votes in 1994 as in 1990 (the preceding nonpresidential election year). There was no increase in the Republican vote, but rather a decline in the Democratic vote. I am afraid that the same could happen in 2010.
________________________________________
WE CAN REVERSE THIS BUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST WAKE UP AND BECOME ACTIVE CITIZENS----IF YOU DO NOT, YOU WILL BECOME THIRD WORLD.
What any democratic politician today would be shouting is the threat of global corporations and totalitarianism. We know Maryland is ground zero for the spying apparatus.....NSA and all that comes with the surveillance system tied with Wall Street. So, where are the warnings from Heather Mizeur------
THIS IS WHAT ANY AMERICAN POLITICIAN WOULD BE SHOUTING-----IF NOT, THEY ARE WORKING FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS AND CORPORATE RULE.
All of Maryland pols are working with Wall Street to expand the hold on Maryland and its citizens. We can reverse this by running and voting for labor and justice candidates----
REAL PEOPLE WORKING TO BRING BACK RULE OF LAW AND EQUAL PROTECTION. STOP ALLOWING A NEO-LIBERAL DNC TO CHOOSE YOUR CANDIDATES----THIS IS WHY CINDY WALSH FOR GOVERNOR OF MARYLAND IS BLOCKED FROM ELECTION COVERAGE!
I read a Clinton website that had Chelsea Clinton's child birth deemed a royal birth----these people are moving in that direction!
Corporate Control of American Democracy
" Corporations have taken over the government and turned it against its own people." Ralph Nader
Corporate watch Corporate Welfare Transnational Corporations & the Third World
" I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country. "
Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president 1801-1809
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." President Abraham Lincoln
***** "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas." Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist