Musings of a Liberal Texan

Executives Cash In on War and Oil Bonanza by Emad Mekay WASHINGTON - Top oil and defence industry executives in the United States are raking in record personal profits on the backs of the U.S. wars following the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001 and sky-high oil prices, two think-tanks said Wednesday."CEOs (chief executive officers) in the defense and oil industries have been able to translate war and rising oil prices into personal jackpots," says the new report "Executive Excess 2006," a 60-page study by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report's authors say U.S. taxpayers are funding much of this bonanza and faulted U.S. political and congressional leaders for not exercising better and more thorough oversight. "Americans across the political spectrum should be outraged by the sight of executives cashing in on war windfalls," says report co-author Sarah Anderson. "Unfortunately, part...

Previously I posted an article regarding a lone senator that was blocking an attempt to create a database that would allow anyone to track government contracts and grants. Considering the very real fact that this is our money - yours and mine - we should, by all means, have access, should we be so inquisitive, to where it ends up. What is so telling about all this is that Republicans that were contacted did not follow lockstep and utter "no comment", they released statements of categorical "wasn't me!"...Everyone except our little rebellious salmon man himself.... Senator "Build Me A Bridge" Stevens from Alaska. It certainly appears that this legislation has bipartisan support. Looks like the mystery is all but solved. I bet it bugs the begeezles out of the older guys in government that some tenacious guy with internet access can blow the shroud of secrecy off of a US Senator. Details from Think Progress : Caught Red-Handed: Stevens Blocked Creation ...

Yearnings The faintest touch Butterfly wings Brings Into existence into reality Links that never would be Had he Not taken the bus that day Or from work she did stay Home Instead To shop Or pop Into stores With errands and chores Roam department store floors Seeing that person From where do I know Church work school Neighborhood Swimming Soccer Football orchestra Various clubs Boards Where have I seen her before The glimpse The blink has passed Yet the footprint remains in the sand On the edge of the shore The thought Hovering there Waiting in limbo For an assignment A compartment Limbo’s a terrible place to be Connected but not A life continuously fraught With an eventual loss That guilts sweeps in when A moment catches unaware We dare To allow a smile or laugh To permeate the grief of an impending loss God puts everyone everything in our life For a reason Regardless of season Of fleeting Or undeviating Each connection is an indelible mark We are conductors of electrical charges Playe...

Ode to Mr. Johnson There are certain sounds That lift spinning around Yet some like good jazz That has A primal sway No wonder some say Stay Away From the dirty devil music Emanating from that den Of smoke gin and men Women Sultry Spiraling Swooning Swirling Sullen at times Nothing clouds yet clarifies the mind Like the perfect blend That sends awareness on the unique trip Whatsoever is on the lip Or tongue To be young Again Perhaps a road split Try a trip Down the missed Road of misspent youth Sitting on the roof Watching stars on the first night of fall The music can send to places so far so far visioned never seen meaning to someday for now stay linger in the stillness yet wash afire with flashing desire as saxaphone cascade like beckoning fingers no singers just bass drum kit only live will do it justice felt in the hips even on the tips of these fingers the sound lingers even after the set it just doesn’t get any better that that the cat who flows drifting through the crowd like a...

Invisible Lives I look at the girls or the kid that got away They took their lives into their hands on the day Fought a foe Even though The odds where stacked They fought back Warms my heart for a minute or two But I think of the man who Works in the hardware store See I remember what it feels like to be poor Even to move to breath cost more I could barely drag myself off the floor Kids in school who fall asleep on their books Staff and kids cast looks She’s so weak from not enough to eat The downward spiral too hard to beat Going all day Expected to play Expected to pay With minimum wage When you’re diluting your milk So it’s just chalky water Something isn’t right When taxpayers have to pay for lights In Iraq When theirs are being turned off at home Babies left alone So mom can work Another job People lining up for food Today Just like in the day Of Depression Poverty’s so debilitating hard to get up and go Simply because you know That even breathing will begin the cash flow Hard to ...

News freakin' flash This just in.... A wave of shock swept over the world when surprise upon surprise the guy who we have been tracking better than Ernesto, with more information about his diet than we could ever have wanted, the freak that claimed to have killed the blond 6 year old - JonBenet, is not being charged. The DNA doesn't match. Gosh. I'm stunned never saw this coming must regroup. Quick, sideline, off the cuff question...howsabout next time, when we tag someone in say, Thailand or Guam or Bulgaria, we messenger a DNA sampling to the guys in Colorado so that we don't have to fly a guy, business class, from there to here? Just an idea. I know we have money to burn for such endeavors, but just for the "in future reference" file, we might want to entertain that idea. And kudos to the many networks that picked this dazzling piece of news up and chewed on it like an old shoe in the mouth of a retriever. Being such a slow news week and all, I can see why ...

Feverish Musings* Have You Ever Been Poor? Now when I say poor I mean POOR . You cannot scrape together enough money for toll or mass transit – a bus or train ticket, groceries, diapers. You do not have the change to go to the local laundromat and wash clothes. You wash your hair, body, clothes and dishes with the same soap in the same sink. You take split second showers because there is no hot water. All cleaning, homework, or anything that requires light is done before nightfall because there is no electricity. You eat ketchup sandwiches. Your children use the teacher’s stapler to mend hems, Sharpies to color their skin the same color as their pants in order to disguise a hole, and glue to repair sneaker soles. Your children get into trouble for stealing pencils and pens. You are dizzy from hunger. You have about four days of relief after paying rent before your stomach tightens into a knot again wondering how you will pay next month. You never buy clothing retail. You do not even en...

Hunt on Hill afoot for pork-bill blocker By Stephen DinanTHE WASHINGTON TIMESAugust 28, 2006 It's a sign of just how hot an issue pork-barrel spending has become that the biggest game in political Washington this summer is trying to smoke out the senator who is blocking a bill to create a searchable database of federal contracts and grants. The bill has the support of the Bush administration and activists on widely divergent sides of the political spectrum. It also passed a Senate committee without any objections, so the unknown senator is annoying many people. Sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, and Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, the bill would require the administration to create a searchable Web site that would list the name and amount of any federal grant, contract or other award of money amounting to $25,000 or more. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Tennessee Republican, tried to win speedy passage just before the Senate left for its summer break, but ...

A few musings...from other people! (how exciting!) "We cannot bring ourselves to regard close confinement of sows by stalls or thethers throughout their pregnancies-- which is, for most of their adult lives-- with anything but distaste."-- Great Britain's House of Commons' Agricultural Committee, report, 1981. “Although other animals cannot reason or speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals.” — Nathaniel Altman (1948- ) “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness Thereof, Oh, God, enlarge within us the Sense of fellowship with all living Things, our brothers the animals to Whom Thou gavest the earth as Their home in common with us . . . May we realize that they live not For ...

Democrats Cite No-Bid Katrina Contracts By Hope Yen The Associated Press Thursday 24 August 2006 Washington - The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, says a House study released Thursday by Democrats. The report, a comprehensive overview of government audits on Katrina contracting, found that out of $10.6 billion in contracts awarded after the storm last year, more than $7.4 billion were handed out with limited or no competitive bidding. In addition, 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion were found to have wasted taxpayer money at least in part, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report. It cited numerous instances of double-billing by contractors and cases of trailers meant as emergency housing sitting empty in Arkansas. Aaron Walker, a national spokesman for the Homeland Security Department's Federal Emergency Managem...

Judge blocks logging in sequoia monument Activists had sued Forest Service over fire prevention plan The Giant Sequoia National Monument includes trees 2,000-year-old. The Bush administration wants to thin much smaller and younger trees within the monument it says are a fire hazard, but a judge has blocked the policy.A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Bush administration plan to allow commercial logging inside the Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sided with environmental groups that sued the U.S. Forest Service over its plans for managing the 328,000-acre preserve, home to two-thirds of the world’s largest trees. Breyer had already issued a preliminary injunction, in September 2005, to halt further logging in the national monument created by President Clinton in 2000. In the lawsuit filed last year, the Sierra Club and other conservation groups said the management plan for the reserve in the southern Sierra Nevada range w...

TXU Plan Threatens Global Warming Gains Proposal for building 11 dirty coal-fired plants across Texas could wipe out other states' cuts Coal rush: Texas's biggest utility, TXU, wants to build 11 new highly polluting, coal-fired plants across the state, and fast. Take Action » Tell TXU to halt plans to build dirty power plants. Email to Friends » Share this article with others. Many a Texan boasts that everything is bigger and better in the Lone Star state. Even the state's biggest utility, TXU, touts on its web site that it is planning "a Texas-sized $10 billion investment" in 11 power plants across the state. But in this case, bigger is definitely not better. TXU chief executive, C. John Wilder, has unveiled a plan that would double the utility's already sky-high emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. The proposed power plants are to be conventional (or pulverized) coal-fired, which uses outdated, highly...

7 Facts You Might Not Know about the Iraq War by Michael Schwartz With a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon holding, the ever-hotter war in Iraq is once again creeping back onto newspaper front pages and towards the top of the evening news. Before being fully immersed in daily reports of bomb blasts, sectarian violence, and casualties, however, it might be worth considering some of the just-under-the-radar-screen realities of the situation in that country. Here, then, is a little guide to understanding what is likely to be a flood of new Iraqi developments -- a few enduring, but seldom commented upon, patterns central to the dynamics of the Iraq war, as well as to the fate of the American occupation and Iraqi society. 1. The Iraqi Government Is Little More Than a Group of "Talking Heads" A minimally viable central government is built on at least three foundations: the coercive capacity to maintain order, an administrative apparatus that can deliver government servi...