Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Indictment, Ethics Questions, Abramoff Case Are Obstacles

If his lawyers have advised DeLay not to talk about the case, he has ignored their counsel, giving interviews on television with the frequency of someone who has just won an election rather than one who has just received legal papers.

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First, here’s the AP: Generals Say Iraq War Strategy Is Working

Now here’s Reuters: Generals: Iraqi security capability has shrunk

The House on Thursday passed legislation that could greatly expand private property rights under the environmental law that is credited with helping keep the bald eagle from extinction but also has provoked bitter fighting.

By a vote of 229-193, lawmakers approved a top-to-bottom overhaul of the landmark 1973 Endangered Species Act, perhaps the nation’s most powerful environmental law. The law has led to contentious battles over species such as the spotted owl, the snail darter and the red-legged frog

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Please note that AL WYNN voted for the measure.

Ya gotta love it!!!

DeLay was summoned by a judge to appear in court in Austin on Oct. 21, but his lawyers are working to spare him the humiliation of being handcuffed, photographed and fingerprinted. [emphasis added by me]

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Yet another example of BushII Administration incompetence.

Nearly a year after Congress demanded action, the Pentagon has still failed to figure out a way to reimburse soldiers for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.

For Marine Sgt. Todd Bowers that extra piece of equipment _ a high-tech rifle scope bought by his father for $600 and a $100 pair of goggles _ turned out to be a life or death purchase. And he has never been reimbursed.

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“I think that the Democrats are unable to exploit issues like energy, taxes and Iraq because they have nothing to say,” said Weber, who remains an important GOP strategist. “The problem with the issue of corruption is the opposition party doesn’t have to have anything to say. All you’ve got to be is the other party, so it worries me.”

I’ve asked it before, and I’ll ask it again: Just how can the Greens take advantage of the situation?

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Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay new drilling for oil. When the storm turned north, away from Galvaston, it plowed through the heart of the offshore Gulf oil patch, after Katrina had cut a path through the eastern edge of the field.

Based on what we have right now, it appears that drilling contractors and rig owners took a big hit from Rita,” said Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. “The path Katrina took was through the mature areas of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production] platforms. Rita came to the west where there is a lot of [exploratory] rig activity.”

High oil prices has been increasing the demand for oil rigs, which are movable and are used for exploration and development. Rigs were in short supply before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew through the US Gulf in late August and September. A rig ordered today is unlikely to be ready before 2008 or 2009.

Rita and Katrina have created yet another bottleneck in the oil and gas industry by taking out so many rigs. The markets, having absorbed this information, are moving higher again, after the first sigh of relief that Rita had missed Galvaston temporarily drove prices down.

How Aid Became Affirmative Action for Whites

It was during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman that such great progressive policies as Social Security, protective labor laws and the GI Bill were adopted. But with them came something else that was quite destructive for the nation: what I have called “affirmative action for whites.” During Jim Crow’s last hurrah in the 1930s and 1940s, when southern members of Congress controlled the gateways to legislation, policy decisions dealing with welfare, work and war either excluded the vast majority of African Americans or treated them differently from others.

Between 1945 and 1955, the federal government transferred more than $100 billion to support retirement programs and fashion opportunities for job skills, education, homeownership and small-business formation. Together, these domestic programs dramatically reshaped the country’s social structure by creating a modern, well-schooled, homeowning middle class. At no other time in American history had so much money and so many resources been targeted at the generation completing its education, entering the workforce and forming families.

But most blacks were left out of all this. Southern members of Congress used occupational exclusions and took advantage of American federalism to ensure that national policies would not disturb their region’s racial order. Farmworkers and maids, the jobs held by most blacks in the South, were denied Social Security pensions and access to labor unions. Benefits for veterans were administered locally. The GI Bill adapted to “the southern way of life” by accommodating itself to segregation in higher education, to the job ceilings that local officials imposed on returning black soldiers and to a general unwillingness to offer loans to blacks even when such loans were insured by the federal government. Of the 3,229 GI Bill-guaranteed loans for homes, businesses and farms made in 1947 in Mississippi, for example, only two were offered to black veterans.

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Democrats and liberals are ecstatic that President Bush has finally faced his moment of accountability. The travails of Hurricane Katrina followed a bad summer for the president and have called into question his leadership style, competence and intense partisanship.

But Democrats are less ecstatic about . . . Democrats. Over the past several weeks, it was impossible not to run into Bush critics who would shake their heads and complain: “Yes, but where are the Democrats? Who are our leaders? What do they have to say?”

This column begs the question: Just how can the Greens take advantage of this opportunity?

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‘Intelligent Design’ Teaching Challenged

“This clever tactical repackaging of creationism does not merit consideration,” Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer for the parents, told U.S. District Judge John E. Jones in opening arguments. “Intelligent design admits that it is not science unless science is redefined to include the supernatural.”

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