david rovics: new CD - listen to it online

Hey folks,

Writing from lovely Traverse City, where I just finished a bit of a midwest tour last night. There were many highlights, but probably the most vivid was singing "Song for the BBB" while a dozen or so Earlham students threw pies at each other. William Kristol received his just desserts while giving a speech at Earlham just a couple weeks ago, and there's been a bit of a controversy there ever since... (Check out www.bioticbakingbrigade.org for more on this sort of thing -- and get the video, it's great!)

So now I'm heading off to Washington, DC for the IMF/World Bank protests that start tomorrow or so. I'll be doing two concerts there, one with Yikes McGhee and one with the fabulous hiphop band, the Cyphernauts -- more on those on the "gigs" page of www.davidrovics.com, and more on the protests at www.globalizethis.org. Hope to see some of you there! And for those in the northeast I hope to see you in Boston or Providence or New York or someplace later this month. Then it's off to Wisconsin, Denmark, Sweden and Britain, more or less in that order...

OK, but the main thing I wanted to mention here is that my new CD, which is called FOR THE MOMENT, is now online in it's entirety on my website. You can either go to www.davidrovics.com and click on the link in the top center of the page, or find it on the top of the "audio and video" page on my website, or go there directly via www.soundclick.com/davidrovics.

The CD will be out in physical form in a few weeks. It's currently in the process of being replicated at a plant in Oregon. It'll be on Yoyo Records (www.yoyoagogo.com) an independent label based in Olympia, Washington. It'll be distributed in stores by NAIL, so if you go to a store (sometime after it's out in physical form) and it's not there, feel free to request that they get a couple copies thru the NAIL distro.

When it's out physically you'll also be able to buy it via the "buy stuff" section of www.davidrovics.com, and of course at shows. If you know any radio programmers who would like a copy they should feel free to just email requests for CD's with their mailing address to me and I'll forward that on to the appropriate people.

I'm really excited about the new CD, and I hope you like it, too! It includes great instrumentation by folks like Sean Staples and Dave Westner from Boston, and lots of new songs you haven't heard yet. I'd particularly like to point out Professor D's rap on "Falluja." Check that out, and then consider organizing a show for me and his band, the Dope Poet Society, when we do a tour together, which will hopefully happen in late July. But basically, please feel free to go to www.soundclick.com/davidrovics and download some or all of it, and spread the word about it. Together we can break the Clearchannel monopoly on reality...

That's all for now, I guess.

Yours,
David

Law Suit Filed Re: Snohomish Voting Machines

Published: Friday, April 8, 2005

A contract between Snohomish County and a private firm is unconstitutional,
two Everett men argue in court action.

By Jerry Cornfield
Herald Writer

SEATTLE - Two Everett men filed suit Thursday to void the contract between Snohomish County and the maker of its electronic voting machines, claiming the deal illegally shifts control of vote counting from the public to a private company.

Paul Lehto and John Wells allege in their suit that the contract between Snohomish County and Sequoia Voting Systems violates the U.S. Constitution by altering the right of citizens to an open and transparent election.

The Democratic and Republican parties shield information that would prove the ballots are tabulated exactly as they were cast, insisting the data is a trade secret.

"Who's the boss is the issue," said Lehto, an attorney. "A private party controls the election for Snohomish County, and the government has to do what it says, and that's not right.

The Constitution does not allow government to set up systems that are uncheckable."

Lehto and Wells filed the suit in King County to avoid having Snohomish County Superior Court judges handle a case that affects their employer.

Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger said late Thursday that he had not seen the lawsuit. He said he has spoken with Lehto in the past and fulfilled his requests for public information.

John Gideon of VotersUnite!, a national nonpartisan organization that monitors elections and the performance of electronic voting machines, welcomed the suit.

The machines "are not transparent. Votes are counted by software, and that software is kept secret from anyone who is not an employee of Sequoia," he said.

"The citizen has no idea what happens to that vote after they put it into the machine."

Snohomish County signed a $5 million contract in July 2002 to buy 1,000 machines from Sequoia, according to the suit.

Click on Link for more ...

Kinda Fonda Jane

Karen H. Pittman

Hey, guys, quick before you miss it, look up: I'm about to step out onto the ledge here and say something terribly controversial. I'm about to break ranks with my conservative brethren.

Yes, Jane Fonda did some horrible things in Hanoi. Yes, she was a wild child, an hysterical 60’s flower-power flouter of the first order. But that doesn’t change the fact that she herself may have changed. Whoever the girl was, the grown woman is now someone else entirely – a mature, thoroughly mellowed 67-year-old grandmother in need of artificial hips.

Try as I might, for the sake of the cause, I cannot dislike her. For despite her faults, she brings one sterling quality to the table which your typical Hollywood socialite does not, and that is substance. Jane Fonda herself is silver-minted. And let's face it: No airhead would have dared perch her derriere atop an enemy gunship just for the sake of publicity.

Whatever we may think of Ms. Fonda's activism in Vietnam, we cannot seriously think she did all of that for attention. If nothing else, we must at least be intellectually and morally honest enough to admit that Jane Fonda, the girl, did the things she did for the same reasons we do – because she truly, acutely, radically believed. To assert anything less is to do ourselves and our cause a disservice, to say nothing of her and hers.

And if we, some thirty-five years later, still can’t get over it, that’s our problem. If more of us would just do what I'm trying to do in making the effort to look past this woman's tempestuous past – if we would all just chill out long enough to suspend judgment for five whole minutes and actually listen to what she has to say – we would happily discover, I believe, that much of what she says has merit. Her words are, at times, even profound.

Agree or disagree with her political ideology, embrace or disavow her evolving brand of Christianity, at least Jane Fonda is herself evolving, and is committed to some cause larger than her own. At least she is earnestly searching.

I mean, my God, if the Pope could forgive Mehmet Ali Agca, can't we forgive Jane Fonda?