Day: May 3, 2007

Spoiling Everything Else Just to Use More Energy

Trish

The Sierra Club is reporting even more depressing news on a day that included the devastation of honeybees and no end to problems with the nation’s food supply.

Get a load of this:

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? It doesn’t apply to Texas. Nuff said.

Jaws dropped last week when the DOE proposed its first two so-called “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.” They covered the entirety of [Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey] and vast swaths of southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and New York. Under everyone’s favorite bill, the Energy Policy Act of the 2005, the DOE can designate such corridors for new pipelines and powerlines. And if local or state officials want to protect their wilderness area, wetland, tribal burial ground, or Civil War battlefield — TOO BAD! The federal government can approve transmission lines over local objection and even if they conflict with other federal laws, such as the National Environmental Policy Act.

Best of all, once they’re approved, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been granted sweeping powers of eminent domain. So FERC can then swoop in, take your property from you, and turn it over Energy Company X so they can pad their bottom line.

Have any doubts about the motivation for this treachery? Wait, there’s more.

This provision of EPACT 2005 — never debated on the floor of the House — does include one Texas-sized loophole. As in, the whole state of Texas is excluded from this vast and likely unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

Nuff said.

On ‘Mission Accomplished’ Day, Desperate Bush Mentions al Qaeda 28 Times in Speech on Iraq

Jon Ponder

Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of his “Mission Accomplished” debacle, Pres. Bush delivered a speech to a construction industry group in which he desperately tried to link the war in Iraq to 9/11 — using the words “al Qaeda” 28 times in 73 minutes. (He also used the word “progress” 15 times.)

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Here he is at his most shameless:

Al Qaeda is the group that plot [sic] and planned and trained killers to come and kill people on our soil. The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens. I’ve got to tell you, that day deeply affected my decision-making. And I vowed that I would do anything that I possibly could within the law to protect the American citizens against further attack by these ideologues, by these murderers.

And:

For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11. I strongly believe it’s in our national interest to stay in the fight.

The only rational explanation for reviving the 9/11-Iraq bugaboo now is to keep Fox News watchers in the fold. They’re the only ones who still believe Saddam was behind the attacks.

Or maybe, as Keith Olbermann suggested, the White House message team is forced to drag out this tired crap because that’s all they’ve got left.

Folks Who Brought Us Walter Reed Scandal Take Huge Bonuses for Being Loyal to Bush

Trish

At the Veteran’s Administration, it pays to support your president. Literally.

The GAO determined the VA used misleading accounting and claimed false savings of more than $1.3 billion, apparently because President Bush was not willing, at the time, to ask Congress for more money

By lying about their budget, doling out care so bad it risked the lives of wounded veterans, and presiding over rat-infested hellholes, the guys and gals who run the V.A. took the biggest “performance payments” of anyone in civil service.

The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006… documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among those receiving payments were a deputy assistant secretary and several regional directors who crafted the VA’s flawed budget for 2005 based on misleading accounting. They received performance payments up to $33,000 each, a figure equal to about 20 percent of their annual salaries.

Also receiving a top bonus was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who helps manage a disability claims system that has a backlog of cases and delays averaging 177 days in getting benefits to injured veterans.

The bonuses were awarded even after government investigators had determined the VA repeatedly miscalculated if not deliberately misled taxpayers with questionable methods used to justify Bush administration cuts to health care amid a burgeoning Iraq war.

Ever idly wondered what selling your soul feels like? Just ask the V.A. They sold theirs to Bush.

In July 2005, the VA stunned Congress by suddenly announcing it faced a $1 billion shortfall after failing to take into account the additional cost of caring for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan…

The investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, determined the VA had used misleading accounting methods and claimed false savings of more than $1.3 billion, apparently because President Bush was not willing, at the time, to ask Congress for more money.

V.A. officials based in Washington D.C. got the biggest checks, triggering the Senate Chair of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) to ask what’s up with that. Smells like cronyism to me.

After six years of Bush, the big surprise is that we can still be surprised at his administration’s blatant raiding of the public till. After all, this is small potatoes compared to the rip-off which is private contracting. But still.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the VA bonuses appeared to reflect a trend in government where performance bonuses were increasingly used to reward loyal associates and longtime employees…

“Simply put, people who nearly shortchanged our veterans shouldn’t get a bonus check at the end of the year,” he said.

Stephanie Miller Gets a Rave Review for Her Stint on MSNBC

Jon Ponder

Brent Budowsky at The Hill:

Progressive radio talk show host Stephanie Miller is doing a great job in the old Imus spot on MSNBC, and I hope everyone has a chance to catch her show.

Stephanie is a comedienne, radio host and progressive impressario, and it’s great to see her doing cable television.

She’s funny, pointed, provocative, progressive and her time on MSNBC is a mini-breakthrough and I suspect we’ll be seeing more of her.

There are some exciting developments in progressive radio and entertainment.

MSNBC is famously located across the river from Manhattan in Seacaucus, NJ. Stephanie talked a lot about being homesick for Los Angeles, so I’m not sure she’ll be back on the air anytime soon, which is a shame.