Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

Got this from Scott Loughrey on his News_Junkie_GP Listserv.

Despite repeated reports over the past 18 months or so that the planned bourse would finally open for business on March 20, 2006 — and go head to head with the New York Mercantile Exchange and the ICE Futures Exchange in London — the start date has been postponed by at least several months and maybe more than a year.
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The theory is that all trades through the new bourse would be made in euros, not the U.S. dollar, which for decades has been the world’s primary reserve currency, as well as the one in which oil and most other commodities have been priced. As a result, European nations and other countries, especially Middle East oil producers, tired of having to buy billions of now weakening greenbacks to pay for their energy purchases, would no longer have to do so.

This, the conspiracy theorists contend, would knock the stuffing out of the U.S. currency and hasten the decline and fall of the American Empire, all the while allowing Iran to stick it to the Great Satan.

But, the theory continues, Washington will pre-empt all this by using Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a pretext for attacking the country.

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_14125.shtml

Got this from Dennis Kobray at the Green All Views Listserv.

Many electric utility companies across the nation are collecting billions of dollars from their customers for corporate income taxes, then keeping the money rather than sending it to the government.

The practice is legal in most states. The companies say it is smart business.
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Among the electric utilities whose customer tax payments are not reaching tax coffers is Pepco, serving four states and the District of Columbia. Pepco collected nearly $546 million from customers to cover its income tax bill for the years 2002 through 2004. Yet the parent Pepco Holdings did not pay income taxes during those years; indeed, it received $435 million in tax refunds.

Click here for link.