If you will be in Redding on June 3, you might want to drop by Redding Dialysis, 1876 Park Marina Drive.
U.S. Rep. Wally Herger, R-Chico, will visit with patients on Thursday to discuss health care concerns related to recent proposed cuts in Medicare and Medi-Cal funding for dialysis.
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To The Honorable Wally Herger,
I am writing today to ask you to co-sponsor Rep. Boucher & Doolittle's Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, H.R. 107). I believe that our copyright law has become unbalanced and fails to address the interests of the public.
The DMCRA would protect consumers from buying "copy protected" audio compact discs that may not work in personal computers, cars, and other consumer devices. It would also codify a citizen's right to make fair uses of copyrighted material. I think that this is an absolutely fundamental step towards redressing the imbalances that have plagued copyright law in recent years.
As a constituent, I urge you to co-sponsor the DMCRA and show your support for the public's rights in digital media. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Patrick Berry
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To The Honorable Wally Herger,
I am writing to express my opposition to the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004 (PDEA, HR 4077). HR 4077 would divert taxpayer dollars and direct federal law enforcement agencies to fight the entertainment industry's misguided war on file sharing. It would also create the first criminal copyright penalties for people who aren't engaged in willful criminal conduct. Under the law's murky "negligence" standard, a person with 1,000 legally obtained songs could be sent to jail for three years if she fails to lock them up tight enough. I believe that these measures are an egregious misuse of federal resources, and I hope you will oppose this bill.
Copyright law that expands liability to innocents is not the answer to the conflict over P2P. Copyright holders already have an extraordinary array of legal tools at their disposal for fighting infringement.
Instead of criminalizing the activity of 60 million American filesharers, we should be looking for positive solutions that compensate artists. For example, a collective licensing regime could legalize file sharing while generating revenue for artists. Here is one example of such a plan:
http://www.eff.org/share/collective_lic_wp.php
I am also opposed to HR 4077's proposed "education" program. If government is to educate the public about copyright, the curriculum must be balanced. The public has a broad range of rights to use copyrighted material, and omitting them is misleading and counterproductive.
As a constituent and a taxpayer, I hope you will agree that HR 4077 is an inappropriate use of government resources. Please oppose HR 4077 and instead look for a better way forward. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Patrick Berry
There hasn't been a whole lot of Wally News™ as of late. I'm still awaiting replies to my first two e-mails. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure he will not respond via e-mail, but rather with a nice 3 page form letter. But Wally did just barely show up in an AP story today picked up Newsday.
Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., took five trips, traveling to Beijing for a week last October, funded by the US-Asia Foundation. He also traveled to Oakland, Calif., funded by KARE, a western logging industry group, to view the Klamath National Forest.
He took the Klamath trip at the behest of Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif., and later voted in favor of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which authorized $760 million for projects to clear and thin forests to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.
Now going on a trip, seeing the Klamath National Forest, and then voting for HFRA is nothing out of the ordinary. What really caught my eye was that some big tell all Congressional Financial Disclosure report must have just been published. I've been searching for this since I saw the story and haven't come up with anything. Does anyone have the scoop on where this report is published?
Clarification: Wally asked Simmons to take the trip. I don't think I made it clear that I understood that Wally really didn't do anything here. My point all along was that there is a report out there with lots of details and I can't seem to find it.
To the Honorable Wally Herger
I would like to ask if you are supporting H.R. 163, the Universal National Service Act of 2003.
Thank you,
Patrick Berry
To The Honorable Wally Herger,
I was doing some research on Congressional votes and I was wondering if you or your staff could clear up a few votes for me.
Sincerely,
Patrick Berry
It's not surprising that Wally voted yes on the PATRIOT Act. Most of Congress went right along with it and some didn't even take time to read the damn thing. I should send him a letter asking him if he reviewed the bill before he voted for it.
Why am I only picking on Wally and not all of the democrats who voted for it? He is my elected official and because it's Wally Watch silly!
From the Rock Hill Herald:
Commission officials reported that since the 1980s, the number of children in foster care doubled nationwide, partly because of increasingly fragile families and also as a result of economic problems. Evidence at a recent congressional hearing indicated the failure by state welfare agencies to ensure children's safety.
"No state passed that test and this is unacceptable," Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources, noted in a statement that pledged the Pew Commission proposals would be considered as a solution.
Good for you Wally. Let's hope that the Pew Commission proposals are taken seriously and the idea of more privatization doesn't suddenly spring up.
Points of contention highlighted in yellow.
As President Bush has stated, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is abhorrent and deserves to be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I commend the Secretary of the Army and the Department of Defense for their speedy investigation of this incident, and their follow-up administrative review of prisoner protocol. From all the many young men and women I have spoken with in the military, this kind of behavior is clearly the exception, not the rule. Our mission is to aid the Iraqi people.
The Center for American Progress tracks down all dates and players. If Paul Bremmer, the chief administrator in Iraq, was "kicking and screaming" about this in the Fall of 2003 does is still count as "speedy?"
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) also wondered why Rumsfeld didn't bother to mention anything about the situation when he was briefing Congress. Remember, oversight is what Congress does.
However, we must not allow this incident to overshadow the progress being made on a daily basis in Iraq. There are those in the Arab world and elsewhere who are constantly on the lookout for signs of American weakness in the war on terror.
While there are no obvious points of contention here, it is meant to misdirect us from the fact that prisoner torture is wrong by pointing out that people want to hurt us. There will never be a time in history when somebody, somewhere will not want to hurt the United States or see us fail. In no way does this condone the torture of prisoners. It never has and it never will. Trying to associate the investigation with American weakness is a dirty trick. Compassion and a show of humanity is not weakness, nor is showing concern for a group of people other than ourselves. Also we must not let the fact that good things happen shield us from the horrors that happen in Iraq, they must be dealt with. For those honestly curious about the progress being made in Iraq, USAID has a site with extensive records and archives.
Even in America, there are some who seek less to punish the offenders than to exploit this incident to discredit the war and advance their own political agenda. These actions only serve to further harm our relations with the Iraqi people, and endanger the lives of our soldiers trying to keep the peace.
It's like being at an NFL game, looking at the score board, noticing that you are 14 points behind and telling your friend that, "hey, we better score some points or we will loose." Then your friend asks you why you hate the home team. Not only that, but he encourages the people around you to start throwing things at you. To add insult to injury he then goes to the press booth and has them train the cameras on you and has John Madden start making fun of your shirt.
What is making life more dangerous for our soldiers is enforcing the image of America The Bully. Nobody likes a bully. Ignoring the Geneva Conventions is a fatal mistake for our soldiers made by the people in charge that should have known better. JAG knew this better than anyone, and tried to prevent this. CAP asks the question: Knowing this decision would undermine the U.S. military culture and lead to the abuse of prisoners, why did the Administration ignore the advice of the State Department and JAG lawyers?
In light of this setback, we must, as a nation, push forward to establish a free and democratic Iraq.
It is said that the first step in getting out of a hole is to stop digging.
However, progress and reconstruction is steady, and continues despite these remaining violent elements in Iraq. Schools are being rebuilt, water supplies purified and delivered. Energy is reaching millions of households. The free press is flourishing, and millions of Iraqis are aiding recovery by engaging in their fledgling commercial society. Civil liberties, virtually unknown under Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, are being experienced by the Iraqi people for the first time.
Bechtel is "rebuilding" many of the schools in Iraq, this much we know. What isn't exactly clear is how well are they doing? There are reports of old schools simply being repainted with no actual infrastructure work being done. This should be a matter of "who do you believe, us or them," especially since we know that bad news doesn't move up the chain very well.
The electricity situation is also up for debate. But a CPA memo from March 2004 shows that the PR line may not match what is really happening on the ground. This comes from inside the CPA, the people who we trust to run things. "Despite repeated assurances over the past year from CPA chief L. Paul Bremer that Iraq's electricity situation has vastly improved, the memo says otherwise, reporting that there is "no consistency" in power flows. "Street lights function irregularly and traffic lights not at all ... Electricity in Baghdad fluctuating between three hours, on and off, in rotation, and four hours on and off."
Now to the issue of the "free press." The closing of the Baghdad newspaper Al Hawsa did little to sell the Iraqi people on our intentions of liberating them and installing democracy. Yes, the paper was accused of "inciting violence against coalition forces," but the closing of the paper had that very effect. The "coalition" must stop putting itself in situations where on either side of the coin is a loss.
The idea of "civil liberties" should also be viewed through Executive Order 13303, which some have interpreted as making Iraq a lawless area. Also the revelations that have come to the surface in the Abu Ghraib, which showed that Iraqis were sometimes randomly jailed, without charges. Yes, you can be held without charge in the US for 48 hours. Some prisoners there are just now being released.
Now, more than ever, I believe in the just nature of our mission in Iraq. The construction of a free and democratic society, where previously no freedom existed, is our singular goal; self-determination the precedent we are working to establish. Not without setbacks, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism have the potential to result in more peace, freedom and security in the Middle East and around the world.
While freeing people from a dictator is indeed a noble and just cause, we cannot separate the intention from the implementation. Our implementation has not gone well, as Donald Rumsfeld has finally admitted. It should be noted that this just cause was the third and final attempt to sell this war to the public, with WMD and terror links being the first two that were tried. The administration has always felt this was a product and not a cause.
Some in the United States have questioned exactly what is the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Whether or not their questions are politically motivated, they do deserve answers. Estimated spending on Operation Iraqi Freedom totals about 1% of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - about same as Gulf War in 1990. In comparison to past wars, Vietnam was 12% of GDP, Korea was 15% of GDP and WWII was 130% of GDP. Sensationalist media accounts of soldiers killed in Iraq have led some to make irresponsible comparisons between the death toll in Iraq and that of the Vietnam War. To clarify this misconception, 726 American armed forces have died in Iraq since the beginning of combat operations in March 2003, with over 200 of those listed as non-hostile, or accidental deaths. By comparison, 58,000 soldiers died in Vietnam.
The cost of the war is measured by many metrics, with the tragic loss of life being just one. If the was truly about the safety of the United States then we should see if we are safer. Are there less terrorists in the world now? Has al-Qaeda been dealt a death blow? Does the world hold a better opinion of the United States now? The Whiskey Bar also points out, sarcastically, that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam.
Others have asked whether or not Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified given the discovery that Saddam did not posses weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The question is erroneous. American intelligence thought Saddam had WMD. French, British and Italian intelligence thought Saddam had WMD. We now know that even Saddam thought he was developing WMD, and was hopelessly deceived by his own scientists. In the words of President Bush, Saddam Hussein was a "grave and gathering danger" to the world. Hindsight does not change this fact, nor the urgency of our response.
The question is not erroneous. If we went to war for a reason, and we find out that reason was bogus, how does that make the war justified? It makes it a mistake.
As the war on terrorism progresses the enemies of freedom are slowly but surely losing ground. Afghanistan and Iraq were opening acts, and still require our close attention. But the real issue is whether America will continue to demonstrate our commitment to the longer war. Can we continue to sustain pre-emptive actions against terrorists across nation-state boundaries? Or will we fall victim to appeasement, and standby until the next 9/11?
He really saves the best for last, and by best I mean "most infuriating." It is widely known that the war in Afghanistan is being ignored. Funds and resources were being drained away even before the invasion of Iraq. The "opening acts" statement sounds like it is straight out of the Project For A New American Century paper where world domination is the only solution. Even if we could dominate the world it would not stop terrorist attacks. "The constant realization of dominance results in fear."
The linking of 9/11, or the "next 9/11" with Iraq is really quite astonishing. This is a fight that we don't want to loose. That means we have to do it right. It means we have to fight in the right places. People who criticize the war in Iraq are not saying that we shouldn't fight terrorism, but rather that we should fight it and Iraq is not where it was. Oddly enough because of our attack on Iraq, terrorism against the US is in Iraq. One might make the argument that attacking Iraq was appeasing al Qaeda. It certainly gave them great footage for a recruiting video.
All in all this was a very effective letter. It spent very little time addressing the actual issue, Abu Ghraid, and was filled with enough talking points that it took me three hours to dig up all the information to put into this response. That's my representative!
We'll have a point by point reply up shortly, as well as a scanned image of the letter to catch any OCR errors.
Dear Patrick:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the ongoing pacification and reconstruction of Iraq, and specifically, the recent incidents of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib detention facility. I appreciate your opinions on this matter.
As President Bush has stated, the abuse of Iraqi prisoners is abhorrent and deserves to be punished under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I commend the Secretary of the Army and the Department of Defense for their speedy investigation of this incident, and their follow-up administrative review of prisoner protocol. From all the many young men and women I have spoken with in the military, this kind of behavior is clearly the exception, not the rule. Our mission is to aid the Iraqi people.
However, we must not allow this incident to overshadow the progress being made on a daily basis in Iraq. There are those in the Arab world and elsewhere who are constantly on the lookout for signs of American weakness in the war on terror.
Even in America, there are some who seek less to punish the offenders than to exploit this incident to discredit the war and advance their own political agenda. These actions only serve to further harm our relations with the Iraqi people, and endanger the lives of our soldiers trying to keep the peace.
In light of this setback, we must, as a nation, push forward to establish a free and democratic Iraq.
In more general terms, the liberation of Iraq has come at a significant cost, both in American and Iraqi lives. The mission to rout out enemy elements in Iraqi society is not yet over. As we approach the pre-determined transfer of power date of June 30, the date when the Coalition Provisional Authority is to turn over limited control to the interim Iraqi governing council, Coalition forces outside the Iraqi city of Fallujah continue to face opposition from radicals, Saddam loyalists, and foreign terrorist fighters.
However, progress and reconstruction is steady, and continues despite these remaining violent elements in Iraq. Schools are being rebuilt, water supplies purified and delivered. Energy is reaching millions of households. The free press is flourishing, and millions of Iraqis are aiding recovery by engaging in their fledgling commercial society. Civil liberties, virtually unknown under Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, are being experienced by the Iraqi people for the first time.
Now, more than ever, I believe in the just nature of our mission in Iraq. The construction of a free and democratic society, where previously no freedom existed, is our singular goal; self-determination the precedent we are working to establish. Not without setbacks, Iraq and the larger war on terrorism have the potential to result in more peace, freedom and security in the Middle East and around the world.
Some in the United States have questioned exactly what is the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Whether or not their questions are politically motivated, they do deserve answers. Estimated spending on Operation Iraqi Freedom totals about 1% of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - about same as Gulf War in 1990. In comparison to past wars, Vietnam was 12% of GDP, Korea was 15% of GDP and WWII was 130% of GDP. Sensationalist media accounts of soldiers killed in Iraq have led some to make irresponsible comparisons between the death toll in Iraq and that of the Vietnam War. To clarify this misconception, 726 American armed forces have died in Iraq since the beginning of combat operations in March 2003, with over 200 of those listed as non-hostile, or accidental deaths. By comparison, 58,000 soldiers died in Vietnam.
Others have asked whether or not Operation Iraqi Freedom was justified given the discovery that Saddam did not posses weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The question is erroneous. American intelligence thought Saddam had WMD. French, British and Italian intelligence thought Saddam had WMD. We now know that even Saddam thought he was developing WMD, and was hopelessly deceived by his own scientists. In the words of President Bush, Saddam Hussein was a "grave and gathering danger" to the world. Hindsight does not change this fact, nor the urgency of our response.
As the war on terrorism progresses the enemies of freedom are slowly but surely losing ground. Afghanistan and Iraq were opening acts, and still require our close attention. But the real issue is whether America will continue to demonstrate our commitment to the longer war. Can we continue to sustain pre-emptive actions against terrorists across nation-state boundaries? Or will we fall victim to appeasement, and standby until the next 9/11?
Again, thank you for contacting me on this subject. Should you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me in the future.
Sincerely,
WALLY HERGER Member of Congress
