READER COMMENTS ON
"Inform Baker/Carter of REAL Election Reform Hearings Tomorrow!"
(30 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
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Grizzly Bear Dancer
said on 6/28/2005 @ 2:29 pm PT...
This is very exciting stuff. These players are the big guns involved with legitimate voting reform in the wake of both electronic and humanistic type frauds which occurred in the last presidential election. They have identified the major problems and have solutions. Can someone please alert the media? Any major US or WORLD media must cover this historic gathering of informed American experts on the issue of how America votes and counts their votes in an effort to produce fair elections. These people have given it all they got against a corrupt corporate machine largely without a even a shoestring budget because they all agree on the importance of preserving our American form of governing. Calling all Nations of the world!!!
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
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Torqued
said on 6/28/2005 @ 4:45 pm PT...
Just in! Pasted below is a response to the VR letter:
RE: Please Participate in ElectionAssessement.org's Houston Hearing!
You are either a malicious person, because you think it's fun to harass people you don't know by being one of hundreds to overfill his mailbox with identical brainless messages, or you are a nincompoop, because you act without thinking about what you are doing. Most likely you are both.
You may rest assured that I will regard any views expressed by you are the organization that has egged you on with extreme suspicion.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
405 Hilgard
Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
310-825-5148
The many faces of Dr. Pastor?
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
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JPentz
said on 6/28/2005 @ 5:26 pm PT...
yup, me too.
You are either a malicious person, because you think it's fun to harass people you don't know by being one of hundreds to overfill his mailbox with identical brainless messages, or you are a nincompoop, because you act without thinking about what you are doing. Most likely you are both.
You may rest assured that I will regard any views expressed by you are the organization that has egged you on with extreme suspicion.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
405 Hilgard
Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
310-825-5148
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
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JPentz
said on 6/28/2005 @ 5:28 pm PT...
Hey Torqued!
We graduated to "hundreds" instead of 6 or 7.
Cheers my friend!
J.
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/28/2005 @ 6:37 pm PT...
Time to get on the damn phone, eh?
Who the hell is Daniel Lowenstein and why is he getting our emails?
Didn't Brad clear up the "spamming" issue last time?
Damn, I hate these people!
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
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SEOhio
said on 6/28/2005 @ 6:54 pm PT...
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
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Brad
said on 6/28/2005 @ 6:56 pm PT...
Daniel Lowenstein is on the Baker/Carter Advisory Committee. As is Thor Hearne of the ACVR. His Email address was published the Baker/Carter Commission on their website.
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/28/2005 @ 7:14 pm PT...
What's their problem with this email letter, Brad? EVERY DAY I sign one that comes from one of our Representatives or Senators!!!
Come On!
What do we need to do?
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/28/2005 @ 7:18 pm PT...
PS --- Daniel Lowenstein is supposedly a Democrat.
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
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Lindy
said on 6/28/2005 @ 7:43 pm PT...
Seems their mailbox is just simply not working for some reason as my message is different. It is possible they now are aware there are in reality more than the now proverbial 6 or 7 of us as it seems to be an automated response:
"undeliverable to info@votehere.com. ...
Dear Mr. President and All Members and Advisors of the Baker/Carter Election Reform Commission:
...to alert you...that ElectionAssessment.org is holding a hearing on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 in Houston, the day prior to your second and final Commission Hearing.... This hearing will feature a host of actual Election 2004 and Election Reform experts and advocates --- the very sort of witnesses that your commission should have invited to testify.
Please consider attending their hearing so that your commission ... for true Election Reform in the United States, and so that you will be aware of the debacle that occured in November of 2004.
For information on the June 29th hearing, please visit www.ElectionAssessment.org or contact
Hearing@ElectionAssessment.org. If you are unable to attend, a DVD will made available shortly after the event featuring all of the important Witness testimony. Contact
DVD@ElectionAssessement.org and they will be happy to send you a copy of the testimony FREE OF CHARGE as soon as it is made available.
These are the expert witnesses and advocates currently scheduled to
[message truncated]"
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
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SEOhio
said on 6/28/2005 @ 7:44 pm PT...
So would it be legitimate to say that Lowenstein is working for a government entity? Are we all ok with the fact that a government entity just called "hundreds" of its constiuents malicious nincompoops?
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
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Jeff wright
said on 6/28/2005 @ 7:54 pm PT...
"Democrat" or "Republican" is really quite inconsequential at this point, seeing as they have both devolved to opposite sides of the same juvenile shouting match taking place with a brick wall serving as mediator in the center. (And I can assure you that unfortunately, the benevolent Wall is doing no more than either side to inject into the mad circus any actual, NON-partisan issues that actually effect the American public-at-large in any way beyond their (baffling) interest in "news" worthy of the Hollywood gossip page, but from good ol' W.D.C.)
The only way any of these hearings is going to do any good whatsoever for ALL Americans is to address why we do not, in practice have a multi-party system as is purported. e.g. Why the hell were Badnarik and Cobb (completely legal, supposedly legitimate candidates for the Libertarian and Green Parties, respectively) ARRESTED FOR TRYING SIMPLY TO ENTER THE (second) PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES TO PARTICIPATE. And as a corollary (not that we'd be verifiable as "sane" in any capacity to believe it would happen any other way), why did we hear N-O-T-H-I-N-G about it in any media anywhere (that I'm aware of, although try as I might, I have yet to fully perfect the ability of omnipresence, so I could be SLIGHTLY mistaken...)?
And that's just for starters...
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
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Brad
said on 6/28/2005 @ 8:12 pm PT...
The Info@VoteHere.com address was Ralph Munro's. He sits on the Commission itself and is CEO of that particular Voting Machine Company.
I guess they killed their "info" address.
That one has now been removed from the list that the letter gets sent to. The other ones, including Daniel Lowenstein's presumably, should be receiving your Emails appropriately.
We can only assume that the Baker/Carter Commission didn't consult Lowenstein prior to announcing that they wanted feedback from Americans.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
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Lindy
said on 6/28/2005 @ 9:36 pm PT...
I presume his mailbox cleared as I received the "nicompoop song" from Lowenstein at 11:30 p.m. ET
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
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Peggy
said on 6/28/2005 @ 10:06 pm PT...
Hi, Brad. One of your intelligent posters here sometime ago recommended using a FAX --- it is a HARD COPY and not so easily disposed of as an e-mail. The VR letter could be printed and faxed if you know a fax number.
Anyway, the 'REAL ELECTION REFORM HEARINGS' are a great idea. Be the media, Be guardians of your liberty and democracy, Be the leaders that the people of America require --- God bless you all.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
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Phil
said on 6/28/2005 @ 10:22 pm PT...
I just find it hard to believe that Carter is lending his cred to these sham-anigans.
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
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ewastud
said on 6/29/2005 @ 2:12 am PT...
I have reason to believe that Dr. Pastor has a history of working for the CIA or in other government covert operations. Do a Google search and you will see what I mean. Pastor boasts of flying into Laos by helicopter about '74 or '75 (Nixon's term) as a "Peace Corps Volunteer" and greeted by a CIA agent on his landing. I was a PCV later during the Carter administration and I know that the Peace Corps was trying to distance itself as much as possible from the CIA, its volunteers frequently being accused or suspected of such illicit and undesirable ties. It was only during the administration of the cynical Nixon that the Peace Corps actually cooperated and worked with the CIA, according to my PC country directors. Pastor also allegedly directed a cover-up of the CIA involvement with the infamous Jonestown massacre in Guyana, S. America. Pastor was an underling of NSC advisor to Carter, Brzenski, at that time. He has been very much a part of the Washington Establishment for his entire career.
I suspect Mr. Lowenstein is in much the same boat. I would not trust either of these men. They openly display their arrogance and lack of professional demeanor.
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
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Robert Lockwood Mills
said on 6/29/2005 @ 2:50 am PT...
When I received the Lowenstein letter, I wondered how somebody at the U.C.L.A. Law School could be a functional illiterate. I exchanged e-mails with him, in which he referred to Velvet Revolution as a "vicious" organization and continued to write the way George W. Bush speaks. He accused me of harassment in each e-mail.
This is Dr. Pastor all over again, except Dr. Pastor can write grammatical sentences and Lowenstein can't. I suspect he's a G.O.P. plant, or maybe just a guy whose name ended up on a list. But what is he doing at a prestigious law school?
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
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Torqued
said on 6/29/2005 @ 6:04 am PT...
Same here, he's an emotional wreck struggling to complete four coherent sentences. I give him no more than an 88 IQ with an emotional problem. Literacy will not be possible for the poor man.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
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Ada
said on 6/29/2005 @ 6:31 am PT...
"Comment #16 I just find it hard to believe that Carter is lending his cred to these sham-anigans. "
I so agree and putting Baker the enforcer of the first fraud in charge, it's such a slap to all citizens.
Voting integrity is not a partisan issue!
We all know, but somehow can't convince the general bushites that the only logically and proven reason for it to be a partisan issue is when one side refuses to allow 'the fix of voting by demanding all states have voter verifiable auditable hardcopy producing voting machines, and fix the opti scanner programming glitch that allow untrackable fraud'. Their continued refusal, especially in states like Florida prove they chose to abuse (i.e. fraud and steal) elections, thus don't want things fixed.
But the same congress and senate that haven't been able to get voting fixed in one weekend pulled a bill together to include getting bushit to fly to DC to sign it to help Terry Schiavo? Heck we all know bush didn't leave crawford for national security issues and moved for her....more proof of the intent to fraud citizens, on voting and on actually protecting them.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
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Steve
said on 6/29/2005 @ 10:45 am PT...
I had barely lifted my finger from the send key when I got this e-mail back from Pastor's office:
"I will be out of the office starting 06/29/2005 and will not return until 07/01/2005.
If you need to reach me during this time, please phone my office at 202-XXX-XXXX or, if it is urgent, you might be able to reach me on my cellphone: 202-XXX-XXXX."
A few minutes later I got a friendly form e-mail from e-mail from the Carter Center Web Master basically thanking me for my participation in the process.
This AM I also got a personalized e-mail from Mr. Lowenstein:
"You should be aware that I (and many of the other people you are harassing) am not a member of the commission or its staff. I agreed to be an "advisor" in the event I could provide assistance at some point.
In exchange for that modest offer of assistance, I have more than once this year been besieged by malicious and/or thoughtless people like yourself who, sheep-like follow the instructions of an unquestionably malicious organization that calls itself "VelvetRevolution." Thanks to you and others like you, I have received several hundred identical e-mails, going on a thousand. These have overloaded my e-mailbox, creating serious impediments to doing my work.
Thanks to you, I will certainly not volunteer my services in a similar manner in the future. Petitioning the government is perfectly fine. Electronic assaults on individuals you do not know is not. You are
morally responsible for engaging in this conduct without taking the slightest precaution to ascertain what you are actually doing. Best, Daniel Lowenstein UCLA Law School "
I replied as follows:
"Mr. Lowenstein-
I am sorry if you feel harrassed but this is
absolutely not the way to express your frustrations.
The people who are sending out these e-mails through a very legitimate organization called Velvet Revolution are not sheep as you imply but VERY CONCERNED individuals who are looking for SOME WAY to have an impact on a process that strikes them as anything but responsive to their very real and heartfelt concerns about what is happening in this country. It is people like you who express this kind of distain for REAL AND CONCERNED PEOPLE in the populace that do not belong in any capacity on a group purporting to reform a process as critical to our democracy as the vote. To lash out and call us all "malicious", "thoughtless", "sheep-like" in this fashion tells me that you are the kind of person who should not be filling the position you have volunteered for and that we have done something useful if it means that you "will certainly not volunteer (your) services in a similar manner in the future". I dare say that a good majority of the people who have e-mailed you are just as concerned and likely at least as informed as you about the issues the Baker/Carter commission (which lacks credibility by the very presence of James Baker as a member) is supposedly designed to address. Best, Steve, UCLA ALUMNUS"
Within minutes he responded:
'That "very legitimate" organization knows that I have an extremely peripheral connection to the commission and have played no role whatever in its deliberations. This is not the first time they have
done this to me (and others with a similarly tenuous connection) and they have ignored my repeated requests to be removed from their distribution list.
I have devoted much of my professional life to trying to understand and improve the electoral system. Because of you and your similarly "VERY CONCERNED CITIZENS," I and others like me will decline to cooperate with similar ventures in the future. Best, Daniel Lowenstein...'
I just sent this response:
'Great! Sounds like you're making a wise decision to
"decline to cooperate with similar ventures in the
future".'
If this guy is responding personally to everyone he gets an e-mail from I'd say there is a bit of a pathologic defensive and obsessive streak running through him that is at least as significant in "creating serious impediments to doing (his) work" as simply receiving (and even reading) the e-mails.
COMMENT #22 [Permalink]
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onyx
said on 6/29/2005 @ 12:12 pm PT...
I got a similar response. It seems strange that he is so upset about the flood on e-mail, but he response to many of them repeatedly and included his address and phone number. Very strange!
Daniel - I am very glad to hear that you have no roll in fixing the problems we faced in the 2004 election.
If a mistake was made I apologize. I am sure it could have been rectified quickly if you your approach was not to insult people. You sir should grow up!
-----Original Message-----
From: Lowenstein, Daniel
I am not a policy maker. Get it?
I am an individual who has devoted much of my professional life to trying to understand the electoral system and, in my modest way, trying to improve it. I am not one who "thinks there is nothing wrong with our elections." Get it?
I am not a member of the commission or its staff? A staff member asked if I would be available to be called on for information if something came up on which I could be helpful. Because I did not say no, I was listed as an adviser. Because of that, a group called "VelvetRevolution" put me on a distribution list to be besieged by e-mails. This is not the first time they have done this to me. They have ignored my repeated requests to remove my e-mail address from their list. Get it?
Several hundred sheep-like people such as yourself have followed their commands without making the slighest effort to find out whom they are harassing or why. Get it?
The consequence is that I and probably many others on their list who are situated like me, will refuse to offer such services in the future. Get it?
Petitioning the government is fine. Harassing individuals is not. Get it?
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
-----Original Message-----
nt.org's Houston Hearing!
Daniel,
It is not harassment. I am expressing my opinion to a policy maker. Get it?
Frankly your attitude disqualifies you as such in my opinion.
So you think there is nothing wrong with our elections? It's no wonder when you are arrogant enough to believe anyone that disagrees with you is a malicious nincompoop. I would think a real lawyer could come up with more intelligent words.
I hope the flood of e-mail and phone calls you have received will make you realize how confidence in our democracy has been shaken to the core by the last election and that you will do something constructive about it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Lowenstein, Daniel
I frankly don't care about your opinion of the UCLA Law School. What makes you think your "concerns" as a citizen give you the right to harass other citizens?
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
UCLA Law School
-----Original Message-----
Dear Daniel,
I want you to know that I am a concerned citizen. Please take me and the hundreds of thousands of others that you think are nincompoops a little more seriously. We outnumber you and all we expect of you is a fair look into the overwhelming collection of evidence for fraud in the 2004 election. The evidence won't go away and neither will we.
You could certainly be a better representative of UCLA Law School. You've only succeeded in knocking my opinion of your school down a notch or two.
From: Lowenstein, Daniel
You are either a malicious person, because you think it's fun to harass people you don't know by being one of hundreds to overfill his mailbox with identical brainless messages, or you are a nincompoop, because you act without thinking about what you are doing. Most likely you are both.
You may rest assured that I will regard any views expressed by you are the organization that has egged you on with extreme suspicion.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
COMMENT #23 [Permalink]
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Stephanie Mitchell
said on 6/29/2005 @ 12:23 pm PT...
Yep. Got the Daniel Lowenstein letter. Wrote back to him, told him he must be part of the Commission to get these letter. He wrote back :
I am not a member of the Commission, I am one of a large number of people with some expertise who are listed as consultants. If you really believe it is constructive to send hundreds of identical messages to ANYONE, you are indeed malicious and a nincompoop. And VelvetRevolution, which organizes this and refuses to take my name off their list is a vicious organization. If you think participating in this kind of operation is a way to get your ideas (indulging in the fiction that you might be capable of an idea), then you are truly in need of a brain.
Best,
Daniel Lowenstein
I am writing back to him. I remain polite unlike him. Will keep you posted.
COMMENT #24 [Permalink]
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SEOhio
said on 6/29/2005 @ 12:47 pm PT...
I've also has several email exchanges with Mr. Lowenstein. I'm not going to both to post them all, as they're very similar to the ones above. However, here's my favorite excerpt...
"I am not a governmental official, and my language is not strong enough to describe what you and your cohorts deserve. Of course, you couldn't be bothered to find out whom you are harassing. Why would a malicious, stupid person do that?"
I am finding it hard to comprehend that an supposedly prestigious professor of law (let alone ADULT) is behaving in such a manner. I can sort of understand his displeasure with us, but emailing everyone and calling them names? Maybe he should be a kindergarten teacher instead...
COMMENT #25 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/29/2005 @ 1:33 pm PT...
No, SEOHIO #24, he shouldn't be a Kindergarten Teacher, he should repeat the grade with a better teacher.
COMMENT #26 [Permalink]
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Jeff
said on 6/29/2005 @ 1:35 pm PT...
kindergarten STUDENT...he should NOT be a teacher of ANYTHING (namely, grammar, manners, logical rhetoric, etc. ad infinitum).
COMMENT #27 [Permalink]
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MarkH
said on 6/29/2005 @ 1:49 pm PT...
From UCLA law school, but with a "202" area code phone number (that's Washington, D.C. area)?
Anyway, it sounds like our "6 or 7", now 'a few hundred, going on a thousand', should be e-mailing someone else directly on the commission board.
COMMENT #28 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/29/2005 @ 1:51 pm PT...
I just can't imagine a person who calls himself interested in fair elections becoming upset over all the response from concerned citizens who are using a quite normal method (these days) of voicing their concerns over the internet via signing on to a single statement/letter.
He's missing the point.
Just because we are using an email/letter generator, in no way diminishes our wholehearted agreement with the substance of the letter being sent.
I'm concerned that Mr. Lowenstein has replied to my friends and fellow taxpaying citizens who are members of VelvetRevolution.us with such onerous messages. Those messages make him sound a bit ignorant.
Every single day I sign one of this same kind of letter which has been put together by one of our Representatives or Senators. I cannot believe Mr. Lowenstein is not aware of this practice.
We have no other choice in the current political structure for making our voices heard. We have no other option.
Why in the world would Mr. Lowenstein be leveling such wicked and vicious assessments toward Velvet Revolution?
What is wrong with this picture?
COMMENT #29 [Permalink]
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Kira
said on 6/29/2005 @ 2:11 pm PT...
Could this explain what's out of whack with Daniel Lowenstein?
UCLA profs deplore anti-war resolution
April 23, 2003
Last week, I wrote about how the UCLA faculty senate overstepped the bounds of decency and protocol when 187 members of the more-than-three-thousand-strong senate passed an anti-war resolution on behalf of the entire UCLA faculty. In particular, I noted that the attempt of a tiny number of UCLA professors not only to speak politically for their absent colleagues but to dictate an official faculty position on the war could and should be understood as a serious violation of the principle of academic freedom. There are UCLA professors who agree, and three of them published an op-ed in yesterday's L.A. Times saying so.
Here's what UCLA law professors Kenneth N. Klee, Daniel Lowenstein and Grant Nelson had to say about how the vote was arranged, and what it means that it took place at all:
We were mugged by about 200 of our faculty colleagues at UCLA. These colleagues condemn the liberation of Iraq and wanted to say so publicly. But they were not content to speak out in their own names, as they had every right to do. Instead, they insisted on speaking in our names � and in the names of the more than 3,000 people on the UCLA faculty. ...
.....The resolution they adopted puts the academic senate on record as saying "to our fellow citizens, to the president of the United States and to our senators and representatives" that we "deplore the administration's doctrine of preventive war and the U.S. invasion of Iraq."
The academic senate includes us. A rump group of our colleagues put these words � words that we find loathsome � into our mouths.
COMMENT #30 [Permalink]
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ewastud
said on 6/29/2005 @ 7:10 pm PT...
It could be (as implied by Steve) this fellow Lowenstein has some psychological issues he should be concerned with. However, I tend to believe that we should simply not take what either Pastor or Lowenstein write or say on its face value. The objective in their retaliation against BradBlog followers may be to harass their adversaries when they claim we are harassing them. This would tend to discourage the "wrong side" from participating in their cliquish little "Commission" hearings. It seems to be a common theme among the Bushites to accuse their adversaries of exactly the thing the Bushite is perpetrating.