I’ve been remiss -  I really haven’t given too much attention to my blog, although I apparently have quite a few readers.  The problem is that the ones who do read it and post comments send in mostly spam – a lot of it comes from Eastern Europe.  Naturally I delete this stuff so it won’t be posted, so if the spammers are reading this they may was well cease and desist, as their junk will not be posted.What I will try to do from now on is to post something on the blog as often as I can something that I think will interest my readers and hopefully I will get some interesting and intelligent comments posted that my readers would be interesting in seeing.  I will also now put a signature on all of my outgoing e-mails directing the recipients to my blog and hopefully will increase the readership. It would be nice if those who do read the blog as a result of this will forward the address of my blog to their friends so I can increase my readership.

So here goes:

In this week’s current edition of The Nation Magazine ( www.thenation.com)  there is an interesting article about ACORN, the group involved in communiy organizing.  As you probably have read, a couple of right wing advocates went around to their offices trying to entrap some of their people by creating outrageous situations and secretly filming them and later posting the films on youtube. Congress reacted, and cut off some of the federal funding they were using to register voter, working for the 2010 Census \.

Contrast this with the government’s handling of Blackwater, the private mercenary force used in Iraq and Afgahnistan to perform work that should be done by the military.  A recent federal audit suggest that Blackwater may owe the government $55 million dollars for failing to meet the terms of just one of their federal contracts. Five of their employees face murder charges for their role in the murder of several Iraqi citizens. Yet Blackwater’s $217 million dollar contract was just extended by the Obama administration.  Also, consider the fact that Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company, which received $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electric wiring in Iraq. Sixteen soldiers and 2 civilians have been electrocuted because of this faulty wiring. Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant was just fined 2.3 billion dollars in a fraud settlement, and yet had more than 73 million dollars in federal contracts in 2007 alone.