Great article documents Joe Lieberman's TREACHERY over past dozen years...

BRAVO! To Paul Bass of the HARTFORD COURANT for compiling this listing of Lieberman actual record.

Of course Lieberman's opportunistic TREACHERY - pretending to stand for one thing, while supporting and working feverishly towards THE OPPOSITE - is an icon of the Democratic Party's similar treachery over the past dozen years.

Let us count the ways that Joe Lieberman has BETRAYED VOTERS by APPEARING to stand for one thing, while supporting THE OPPOSITE!

#1. 1993, Lieberman THWARTS Dem. efforts to tighten STOCK-OPTION FRAUD.... leading (according to writer Bass) inexorably to the ENRON massive stock-fraud debacle and meltdown of 2001.

#2. Passing huge tax break for Real Estate industry WITHOUT A FORMAL SENATE VOTE


#3. 1995, one of only 2 Democrat Senators to JOIN WITH REPUBLICANS to KILL a LOBBYIST GIFT BAN

#4. 1994 Joined right-wing icon JESSE HELMS in BANNING fed funding of suicide counseling for gay teens (as provided by their peers in gay groups)

#5. Helped Lynne Cheney found the university CENSORSHIP organization, "American Council of Trustees and Alumn," which hounded liberal university professors for criticizing American foreign policy, including the president of Wesleyan University?

#6. Voted to CONFIRM as Attorney General ALBERTO GONZALES, who is a rubber-stamp for Bush admin. efforts to TORTURE, SPY-ON citizens, and SUMMARY ARREST POWERS, with NO OVERSIGHT to ANYONE (including Congress or courts).

#7. Helped confirm SAMUEL ALITO for the Supreme Court, by OPPOSING a Dem. FILIBUSTER of the Alito nomination

#8. Joined Republicans in making an impeachment issue of President Clinton's affair, while giving White House cover and carte blanche ('free pass') for SERIAL LIES TO WAR...

#9. And, definitively, but by no means finally, the ALPHA and OMEAGA of Lieberman's treacheries, his CAMPAIGNING IN 2000 as a 'leader' who would "FIGHT FOR VOTERS", then not only cozying up to Dick Cheney and the Bush campaign, but SPURNING any serious efforts to challenge Republican VOTE FRAUD in the Florida recount debacle that DISENFRANCHISED THOUSANDS of Florida voters - Gore-LIEBERMAN VOTERS who were BETRAYED by their VP candidate.

(Lieberman's selling the Black Congressional Caucus down the river by refusing to provide the required SINGLE SENATE SIGN-ON required to launch a Congressional Inquiry into the vote recount debacle merely the dramatic climax to the drawn-out "I've already won a safe senate seat" betrayal.)

Come to think of it, Mr. Bass hasn't even mentioned Lieberman's SIGNING ON to the Republican BANKRUPTCY "reform" BILL, aka "credit EXTORTION bill" so favored by the ruthless credit industry and Lieberman's corporate donors (MBNA a master of TACKING ON ADDITIONAL FINES, FEES, and higher interest rates that push consumer interest rates WAY ABOVE 20% per year... i.e. LOAN-SHARKING extortion rates of DOULBING the debt in THREE YEARS or less!

Indeed, Mr. Lieberman is symptiomatic of the Democratic Party at large: GIVEN the POWER and soap-box to CONFRONT the Republican/corporate/radical-right/religious theocracy agenda, Mr. Lieberman prefers to play a game of "I stand for freedom and liberties" WHILE INEVITABLY WORKING TOWARDS THE OPPOSITE on issue after issue, i.e. LESS freedoms and rights for consumers, voters, taxpayers, and the public.


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Seasonal Memory Lapses
by Paul Bass
Hartford Courant
June 4, 2006
http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-pbass0604.artjun04,0,7611693.column


Medical researchers have identified a host of causes for amnesia, from encephalitis to traumatic brain injury.

I've discovered another cause: political campaigns.

Exhibit A: The current campaign in Connecticut for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.

In the wake of challenger Ned Lamont's surprisingly strong showing at last month's Democratic convention, the race has begun to take shape. Both candidates are trying to define the race - and each other - early. Lamont seeks to cast incumbent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman as an out-of-touch apologist and crucial helper of President Bush's Iraq war and environmental, economic and health-care policies. Lieberman seeks to identify his opponent as an out-of-touch plutocrat. (Lamont, a tech entrepreneur, is worth between $90 million and $300 million.)

Meanwhile, in ads and public statements, Lieberman portrays himself as Regular Joe, a fighter for the little guy, in touch with blue-state Connecticut and mainstream Democrats on all issues except Iraq. And somehow we - not just Lieberman - keep a straight face, as if he hadn't just spent 18 years helping Republicans hijack the Constitution and pick on little guy after little guy.

The Bush administration values Joe Lieberman because he has been a crucial ally in efforts to free Enron-style corporate crooks from regulation, transfer wealth to the wealthy, hound gays, trample on the rights of government critics and sacrifice the lives of thousands of Americans and Iraqis to dishonest, dangerous military adventurism.

Lieberman understands how, in campaigns, you can make people forget all that. You can change the subject by making fun of your opponent for being rich. Then, with millions of dollars from wealthy donors, you can reinvent your record.

Watching Lieberman and Lamont these past few weeks, I had to wonder: Am I the one with amnesia? So I went up to the attic and pulled out my Lieberman file, with clippings and documents collected from covering him during his three terms in Washington.

It was true. My memory was faulty. I had remembered that, out of the eye of voters back home, Lieberman developed working alliances with the most hypocritical and dangerous right-wingnuts like Ralph Reed and Charles Murray and Bill Bennett. But I had forgotten just how extensive a record he had accumulated.

I had forgotten how he played the leading role in 1993 to thwart Democrats who tried to close loopholes allowing companies to cook the books on millions of dollars of stock options. Thus began the regulatory abandonment that spawned Enron and its sibling rip-offs. I had forgotten how that same year, Lieberman joined with Republican Sen. Alphonse M. D'Amato of New York and against Democrats to "work the cloakrooms" of the Senate, in the words of a news account, to "line up unanimous support so that a tax break eagerly sought by the real estate industry could be passed without senators having to vote on the record."

How many Connecticut Democrats remember that their senator was one of only two Democrats who voted with Republicans in 1995 to kill a lobbyist-gift ban? Or that he called affirmative action "un-American?" Or that in August 1994 he voted in favor of a proposal by Republican Jesse Helms to cut off all federal money from schools that offer counseling to suicidal gay teens by referring them to gay support groups or in any way suggesting it's OK to be gay?

Or that Gov. John Rowland and Lieberman had the same fundraiser, Michael Lewan, raising the same campaign cash from the same fat cats, because, as Lewan told the Courant, "they're two like-minded guys?"

Did most Connecticut Democrats even know that Lieberman helped Lynne Cheney found a McCarthy-style group called the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which hounded liberal university professors for criticizing American foreign policy, including the president of Wesleyan University?

No wonder Lieberman could vote to confirm an attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote the legal opinion excusing torture. Most recently, Gonzalez threatened to start prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information in order to silence government critics. But that was weeks ago. The new Fightin' Joe is on our side. A real Democrat.

Now it's true that Lieberman earns high marks on Democratic interest group "report cards." That's because he plays a shell game in which liberal interest groups are complicit. He gets the "right" mark for voting against Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, for instance. But he gives the Bush administration the vote it needs to make Alito a judge, by voting to stop a filibuster.

Similarly, he held back on voting for Clarence Thomas's nomination until the first Bush administration saw it had the votes. Then Lieberman could safely vote against Thomas and earn the "right" grade. It's fine for Lieberman to join Republicans in ideological arguments. He does that a lot for someone still calling himself a Democrat. And when he can publicly excoriate President Clinton for having sex with an intern - then hold back on President Bush's immoral lying about Iraq and illegal spying on Americans - he steps over not just a party line, but an ethical line as well.

It's also true that Lieberman has acknowledged some errors. He told me in past interviews that he was wrong to vote with Helms on the gay-bashing proposal. He said he erred in joining the Cheney group. But such after-the-fact admissions ring hollow when he continues to oppose gay marriage, or when he accuses critics of the Bush administration's Iraq war of endangering national security.

Finally, it's true that Joe Lieberman is a genuinely nice person, a decent man. That has nothing to do with his record, with masquerading as a Connecticut Democrat while enlisting in a Republican assault on Americans' bedrock freedoms and norms of social justice. Good people do awful things when power tempts. In watching this senate race unfold, remembering that adage might help ward off the most dangerous effects of Connecticut's political amnesia.

Paul Bass edits the New Haven Independent (www.newhavenindependent.org).