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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:05 AM Original message |
Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News May 15, 2006. It's "The ERD";) |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 02:28 AM by autorank
Harri Hursti, Thank you very much for helping with our struggle.Why can’t our vendor supported testing labs ever find these problems? Oh, I’m sorry, that question answers itself. “These architectural defects are not in the election-processing system itself. However, they compromise the underlying platform and therefore cast a serious question over the integrity of the vote. These exploits can be used to affect the trustworthiness of the system or to selectively disenfranchise groups of voters through denial of service.” 05.06 on the Diebold TS Harri Hursti, Computer Security Exert The fundamental design of the Diebold Precinct-Based Optical Scan 1.94w system (AV OS) includes the optical scan machine, with an embedded system containing firmware, and the removable media (memory card), which should contain only the ballot box, the ballot design and the race definitions, but also contains a living thing an executable program which acts on the vote data. 07.05 on the Diebold Optical Scan 1.94w Harri Hursti, Computer Security Exert Never forget the pursuit of Truth. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:07 AM Response to Original message |
1. Please post any comments at the end of the news thread. |
Please post any comments at the end of the news thread.
If you have an article or discussion thread link, post it below the particular news item. Thanks, “The ERD” News Team. This preserves the unity of the news presentation and, at the same time, allows for comments/debate at the end of the thread. Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:08 AM Response to Original message |
2. WV: Republican Secretary of State Blows the Big Day |
Betty Ireland was busy catching people for “vote fraud” with the Republican Federal Attorney but she had problems in her shop, some corrupt dude ran off with his church donations. Now this, she was caught flat footed in meeting HAVA requirements. The Local boards improvised and it sounded like her shop had some good plans for back up. She was the victim of the “cramdown” of HAVA by the administration, the permanent violation of our rights to free, fair, transparent elections. Herald DispatchVoting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Huntington, WV May 14, 2006 http://www.herald-dispatch.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060514/OPINION/605140337/1034 Forget the 2000 Florida presidential recount. Forget the disenfranchised Ohioans in 2004. As you may know, West Virginia, along with every other state, was required to shift all voting techniques to electronic machines under the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). This federal law reformed voting as we knew it, thanks to the 2000 presidential recount debacle, by providing federal dollars to states to upgrade their systems. Since Betty Ireland took office in 2005, one of her main duties as the secretary of state -- and the chief election officer -- was to make sure West Virginia was HAVA compliant, which includes at least one handicap-accessible voting booth in each precinct. This required Ireland, her staff and others to research choose and implement a HAVA-compliant system. On Sept. 15, 2005, nearly nine months prior to the 2006 primary election, Ireland announced that Electronic Systems & Software (ES&S) won a statewide government contract to make West Virginia HAVA compliant. What the secretary of state did for the next nine months is a mystery |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:00 AM Response to Reply #2 |
11. WV. Betty Ireland Secretary of State--Simply Unbelievable, Disgusting |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 03:13 AM by autorank
How can we help you. (From WV, SoS site) So says Ms. Ireland's web site. But get a look at what's below. This really speaks to the entire absurdity of the voting rights situation in this country. We have goof balls running the secretary of state positions in some states, even one is too many. Alternatively, we've got a few geniuses like Blackwell (don't disparage his intelligence ever, the guy is extremely smart) and Sancho, both bright and intellectually honest. Then we have what we see below. Betty Ireland, cartoonist, prankster. Space aliens with "ray guns" protecting the franchise. This is so disrespectful of the dignity of the voting process but also of the constituents. West Virginians don't need a cartoon to understand Ms. Ireland's system. They know it stinks. They also know that it's not necessary to hide the voting, tabulation, and other features in "invisible" vendor software. This is just appalling. No class whatsoever!!! But in response to cartoon question below: YES, I do have questions about the voting machines. Why did you buy a machine that hides the vote taking, tabulation, and quality assurance process? Do you have something to hide? Do other politicians have something to hide about their electing? Hoe can you do a recount when there's nothing to recount with touch screens? How can you make sure that the count of the machine equals the number of votes cast for a particular candidate? Since you cannot do any of these things, we can assume that you agree with me: none of those elected can truly demonstrate that electing. Therefore, none should hold office. They are illegitimate usurpers. They cannot prove that they were elected. The people of West Virginia have no reason to take the actions of such rulers seriously. You are responsible. Do you know that. Do you have access to the software and methods for the machines you bought? If so, what is your method for checking operational issues, quality assurance, etc. ? Presuming you have access to source (which we know you don't), do you have en ought experts in analysis to look at hundreds of machines? Did you listen, really study, and work through the many problems with electronic voting prior to taking this position? Will you listen to serious people who spend a great deal of time working on voting rights? If so, there is hope. If not, then it's the same old, same-old. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:03 AM Response to Reply #2 |
12. WV: Gideon's Trumpet!!! Gideon pens article for WV paper recently. |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 03:06 AM by autorank
JOHN GIDEON of VotersUnited.Org lowers the boom, drops the hammer, on Republican Secretary of State Betty Ireland, big time.
Why is Ireland making excuses?Thursday, April 27, 2006 John Gideon By JOHN GIDEON West Virgina's Secretary of State Betty Ireland recently issued a press release: "Voting machine vendors across the nation are faced with the daunting task of servicing all 50 states at one time," the release said. "Sometimes this can happen when sweeping federal legislation affects all 50 states," Ireland said in the release. "We understand that ES&S is working hard to meet the demands of all its customers. But we still intend to get what we paid for." Why is the Secretary of State making excuses for Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), the state's voting machine vendor? Yes, ES&S has failed to meet their contract in West Virginia and, yes, ES&S has a daunting task. However, any failures in meeting their contract with the state are of ES&S's own making. They have certainly been paid well enough by tax-payer money to do the job they agreed to do. Would any non-government contractor be given such latitude in meeting obligations of a signed, well-funded contract? It is clear when you look at the nation as a whole that ES&S has oversold their ability to perform. In Oregon, they are now being sued for breach of contract by the state. In Indiana, they are the subject of investigative hearings by the Secretary of State for failure to meet their contracts -- those failures, the Secretary of State has said, could turn into a lawsuit or fines of $300,000 per incident. In North Carolina, ES&S has had to recall 1000 memory cards - which store the tabulations of votes and other information -- because they failed to work. In Summit County, Ohio, the elections director has already announced that the May 2 state primary in his county will probably see a failure in the ES&S voting machines. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:47 AM Response to Reply #2 |
13. Dear Secretary of State Ireland: (suggested letter from WV citizen) |
Below is an article on how the use of voting machines deny the most fundamental rights of citizens, the right to a free, fair, transparent election. Please review the material and be aware that you are, at this point you are full informed of the various processes and outcomes that come together to deny the good people of west Virginia their right to see their votes taken, tabulated, and reported AND the fact that ANY MACHINE VOTING DENIES THOSE RIGHTS.
========================================================== Scoop News http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0604/S00233.htm
Q&A Session with a Commissioner of the Elections Assistance Commission Reveals Massive Violations of Citizen Rights Secret Vote Counting Crammed Down the Throat of Democracy |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 12:21 PM Response to Reply #13 |
16. Permission to quote extensive or in entirety granted by the author. |
Which is me, also see copyright notice at the end granting anyone the ability to do this with attribution.;)
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:55 AM Response to Reply #2 |
14. WV: ESS has another opportunity to shine!!! Who owns that company anyway; |
(From a previous thread)
Crunch time arrives for voting machines (ES&S) http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=137310&format=html Thursday May 4, 2006 by ROBERT SNYDER martinsburg@herald-mail.com MARTINSBURG, W.Va. - Despite assurances that Berkeley County's new electronic voting machines would be available in time for next week's primary election, continuing problems are casting the machines' readiness in doubt, a county elections official said Wednesday. Berkeley County Voter Registration and Elections Supervisor Bonnie Woodfall said that the county's store of touch-screen voting machines, of which one was to be placed in each of the county's 65 precincts, have not been able to be successfully tested. "We're having a few problems," Woodfall said of efforts to test the machines this week. Woodfall said two components of the touch-screen machines that prevented their being used at the start of early voting- a prepared election ballot cassette and a flash card which is mounted to the top of the machines- have been programmed and installed, but problems persist in being able to score vote tallies from the machines during testing. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:58 AM Response to Reply #2 |
15. WV: Bye bye Voting Machines...counties say NO!!! |
Counties Ditch New Voting Machines Two more counties in southern West Virginia are choosing not to use the new machines http://www.wtrf.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=10672 Story by Aaron Mesmer Posted 5/4/2006 06:36 PM Greenbrier and Mercer counties announced plans Thursday to use paper ballots instead of the new voting machines in Tuesday's primary election. Election officials in Greenbrier County say they are definitely using paper ballots. To comply with state and federal laws, the county will also have one handicapped accessible electronic machine in each precinct. Mercer County Clerk Rudolph Jennings says the county wants to use paper ballots, but it doesn't have the necessary handicapped accessible machines to go along with them. Jennings says Tuesday's voting process in Mercer County is now in limbo. "Whatever we do, we'll come up with something that every registered voter, every legal voter gets to vote and their vote is counted," Jennings said. (Excellent! Thank you!) http://www.dailymail.com/news/News/200605054 / |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:08 AM Response to Original message |
3. GA: Political Response by NAACP to Voter ID Law |
Silver lining is way too strong a term to use for this but it’s good to see a political response to the Voter ID law in Georgia or anywhere else. The NAACP is working on registering the poor and indigent the very people who will be hurt by this ID law. Hopefully, this will shove the law right back in the faces of the Republicans who passed it. Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Community advocates trying to get out the votehttp://www.news-daily.com/local/local_story_134213854.html?keyword=secondarystory CNHI News Service — From Staff Reports Voter turnout isn’t expected to produce the long lines it did in 2004. But community advocates are still trying to rally new voters to take part in this year’s midterm elections that include hotly contested races for the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s office as well as some local races that could reshape the school board and the county commission. The Clayton County Branch of NAACP will be registering people to vote through the election. But its major registration drive will be June 17 at Travon Wilson Memorial Park in Riverdale. “There is no reason for anybody not to be registered to vote with all the pain and hardship people went through to get that right,” said Dexter Matthews, the president of the Clayton County Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Also, some worry there is a chance that the Voter ID law that requires photo identification for voters to cast a ballot may be enforced this year. The U.S. Justice Department has given its approval to the state law. But a legal challenge to the Voter ID law is set to continue, making it unclear whether the law will be in effect for elections later this year. While supporters say the law helps prevent voter fraud, its critics argue it will suppress minority vote. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:10 AM Response to Original message |
4. Nation: Diebold TSx study released – devastating. |
Finnish computer and software security expert Harri Hursti prepared a report on his second Diebold security study. It’s a devastating indictment of the security of that voting system and raises questions about just how capable these electronic equipment vendors are. Read the report yourself and see how ad it is. Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Diebold TSx Evaluation SECURITY ALERT: May 11, 2006 Critical Security Issues with Diebold TSx Prepared by: Harri Hursti BBVreport@hursti.net http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVtsxstudy.pdf Executive Summary Due to the nature of this report it is distributed in two different versions. Details of the attack are only in the restricted distribution version considered to be confidential. This document describes several security issues with the Diebold electronic voting terminals TSx and TS6. These touch-pad terminals are widely used in US and Canadian elections and are among the most widely used touch pad voting systems in North America. Several vulnerabilities are described in this report. One of them, however, seems to enable a malicious person to compromise the equipment even years before actually using the exploit, possibly leaving the voting terminal incurably compromised. These architectural defects are not in the election-processing system itself. However, they compromise the underlying platform and therefore cast a serious question over the integrity of the vote. These exploits can be used to affect the trustworthiness of the system or to selectively disenfranchise groups of voters through denial of service. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:12 AM Response to Reply #4 |
5. Nation: July 4, 2005 Report by Harri Hursti on Diebold |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 02:12 AM by autorank
This was the original report that blew everybody away.
Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. SECURITY ALERT: July 4, 2005 Critical Security Issues with Diebold Optical Scan Design Prepared by: Harri Hursti BBVreport@hursti.net http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf The findings of this study indicate that the architecture of the Diebold Precinct-Based Optical Scan 1.94w voting system inherently supports the alteration of its basic functionality, and thus the alteration of the produced results each time an election is prepared. The fundamental design of the Diebold Precinct-Based Optical Scan 1.94w system (AV OS) includes the optical scan machine, with an embedded system containing firmware, and the removable media (memory card), which should contain only the ballot box, the ballot design and the race definitions, but also contains a living thing an executable program which acts on the vote data. Changing this executable program on the memory card can change the way the optical scan machine functions and the way the votes are reported. The system won't work without this program on the memory card. Whereas we would expect to see vote data in a sealed, passive environment, this system places votes into an open active environment. With this architecture, every time an election is conducted it is necessary to reinstall part of the functionality into the Optical Scan system via memory card, making it possible to introduce program functions (either authorized or unauthorized), either wholesale or in a targeted manner, with no way to verify that the certified or even standard functionality is maintained from one voting machine to the next. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:13 AM Response to Original message |
6. Haiti: Finally, the real winner gets to take office. US candidate lost. |
This is wonderful. The US and Canada (under the Liberals no less) removed this party from power. Maybe they didn’t meet the “vig” (watching the Sopranos, sorry). But you know what I mean. We remove people, they stage an election but when we do that, with Canada again, the people are smart enough to be vigilant about the election. I don’t think we’ll be “liberating” Haiti in the near future. Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Haiti restores democracy as Preval inauguratedSun May 14, 2006 5:07 PM EDT170 By Tom Brown and Joseph Guyler Delva PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - President Rene Preval took office and appealed for peace in his troubled Caribbean nation on Sunday as Haiti inaugurated its first democratically elected leader since Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted more than two years ago. Scores of people chanted for Aristide's return from exile in South Africa as Preval took the oath of office. Shortly before the ceremony, police and foreign troops fired tear gas at the nearby National Penitentiary to quell a riot. Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist who was president of Haiti from 1996 to 2001, takes the place of a U.S.-backed interim administration appointed after Aristide fled Haiti in February 2004 in the face of an armed rebellion and under pressure from Washington and Paris to quit. He appealed for peace in the poorest country in the Americas, which is struggling to establish a stable democracy after decades of dictatorship and military rule and recent political violence that took hundreds of lives. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:15 AM Response to Reply #6 |
7. Haiti: Michael Keefer on the Skewed, Corrupt Election. |
Michael Keefer wrote “End Game” Ohio, one of the best election fraud articles ever. His work on Haiti was really remarkable. It unmasked the USA-Canada connection in trying to install a favorable government. I guess the election was a bit too clean. Must have screwed up on the aggregation. Some vendor is in big trouble.
Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Fraud and Scandal in Haiti's Presidential Election (1)Part (2) Here: http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/article.php?id=170 Haiti's ElectionsPart 1 Nou lèd, Men Nou La! (Haitian proverb: "Think we're ugly? Tough: We're Here!) Tout moun se moun. (Lavalas slogan: "All people are people.") / Haitian voters went to the polls on February 7, 2006 to elect a new president. The election was conducted under the tutelage of the United Nations, which for most of the past two years has been supporting and sustaining Haiti's flagrantly illegal interim government with an occupation force of over 9,000 soldiers and police. After a week of increasingly obvious fraud and chicanery in the counting of the vote culminated in the discovery of tens of thousands of ballots smoldering in a dump outside Port-au-Prince, the Provisional Electoral Council (Conseil Electoral Provisoire, CEP) announced on February 15 an arrangement by which René Garcia Préval could be awarded the presidency. The CEP's decision appears to have been a reluctant one, but the alternative would have been to face increasingly large and vociferous demonstrations from an aroused electorate. This result is a victory for the Haitian people: Préval, who received more than four times as many votes as the second-place candidate—and also, one must insist, won a clear majority of the votes cast—is quite obviously their choice for president. But this outcome of an 'arranged' victory is also, it would seem, exactly what the anti-democratic forces in this situation were hoping they might achieve. ('Anti-democratic forces': this category includes not just the Haitian gangster elite that participated in the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years ago, but also, to their shame, the US State Department, the US National Endowment for Democracy and the NGOs it has corrupted, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations.) These agencies knew as well as everyone else that Préval was going to win by a landslide. Their goal appears to have been to secure an outcome that would make it possible for propagandists and pundits to argue, with their habitual dishonesty, that Préval's victory was in some sense incomplete, or tainted, and that his administration therefore needs to include representation from the more significant defeated parties—who just happen to have been participants or collaborators in the violent overthrow of the Aristide government in February 2004. By: Michael Keefer, Globalresearch.ca Mar-03-2006 |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:16 AM Response to Original message |
8. Huffington Post’s Jane Smiley Kicks Some Serious Tush |
I don’t know who she is but I’ll buy her a drink, coffee, whatever. Nice one. Yikes!!! Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. :rant: Opinion |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:17 AM Response to Original message |
9. PA: Narrowing Voting Opportunities for Urban Philadelphia Voters |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 02:17 AM by autorank
This is odd. The people impacted by this are mostly black, all urban citizens of Philadelphia and the Governor is a former mayor. In many precincts, there are no public buildings so homes are used as voting places. Now that’s out. If anyone has any understanding or an article on this, please post it under this post.
Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news. Posted on Sun, May. 14, 2006 Rendell signs law sharply limiting poll sites |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 02:18 AM Response to Original message |
10. Resources for the Uninitiated: Two great presentations on 2000 and 2004 |
Edited on Mon May-15-06 02:27 AM by autorank
Voting rights and election fraud are incompatible. "The ERD" -- The Gold Standard in voting rights news.
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paineinthearse (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 03:24 PM Response to Original message |
17. MA: public funding for state rep & senate races? |
by email
Should Mass provide public matching funds for House and Senate races? 30 years ago...Remember 1976? It was the year of the Bicentennial. The year we elected Jimmy Carter. And it was the year Massachusetts adopted public campaign financing. The snag? Only candidates for statewide office need apply. House and Senate elections were, and remain, exempt from the public campaign financing law. The 1976 legislation grew out of a report from the Legislative Research Council, which stated: "As campaign costs escalate Thirty years later the problem remains the same. Nowadays the cost of an average House race is $32,000.00. For the Senate the figure is almost $70,000.00. And we are still waiting for the Legislature to enact public campaign financing for legislative elections. So Mass Voters for Fair Elections is organizing advisory questions in a variety of legislative districts. We are asking voters whether Massachusetts should provide public matching funds for House and Senate races. To get involved in the ballot-question campaign, just reply to this e-mail, call 413.253.0511 or contact us via the Mass Voters website, www.MassVoters.org. Thirty years. Tired of waiting? Mass Voters website - http://www.massvoters.org/ |
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Joe Chi Minh (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 06:16 PM Response to Original message |
18. A great find, Auto! |
In some ways, it's actually much more pathetic than denying global warming, isn't it?
Much of the nuts and bolts of the fraud and voter suppression are and/or were visible to us all, while their perverse reaction of seeking to hide and cover up it all up, unlike global warming, cannot be attributed to their demoniac greed, but only to guilt and the fear of being found out. It's no exaggeration to say that they have been behaving, and indeed continue to behave, like naughty infants, who've been found out, and continue to protest that black is blue, that the evidence clear to the eyes and ears (not to speak of the noses) of the adults in the family is a chimera. |
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autorank (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Mon May-15-06 07:14 PM Response to Reply #18 |
19. Thank you so much. Nothing like a real examination. |
They do protest that "black is blue" but, figuratively, they will be "black & blue" when this is all over, their reputations tarnished and their ability to participate in politics limited to races for "dog catcher" (from the colloquialism, "He couldn't be elected dog catcher";).
Cheers. |
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Joe Chi Minh (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Tue May-16-06 01:08 PM Response to Reply #19 |
20. I really like that: dog catcher..... on a part-time, low-paid basis, |
no social benefits of any kind. And definitely no unionization.
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