The Cheney Observer
The Bedfellow Disclosure Bill
Published: May 6, 2005
It is slowly dawning on Congress that the deepening influence of lobbyists' money on the inner workings of the Capitol is looking bad back home. The ethical travails of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, are rooted in his aggressive courting of the K Street lobbying brigade, a $3-billion-a-year industry veiled from proper public scrutiny. But now the spotlight Mr. DeLay brazenly invited is widening to embarrass his colleagues who also cut corners in taking overseas junkets with lobbyists hovering like caterers. The timing is perfect, then, for the tough and long-overdue controls proposed by two Democratic representatives, Martin Meehan of Massachusetts and Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/06/opinion/06fri3.html
SECRET PLANS
Eighty-eight members of Congress call on Bush for answers on secret Iraq plan
RAW STORY
Eighty-eight members of Congress have signed a letter authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) calling on President Bush to answer questions about a secret U.S.-UK agreement to attack Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
http://www.rawstory.com/aexternal/conyers_iraq_letter_502
Controversial lobbyist had close contact with Bush team
WASHINGTON (AP) — In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=2534
Cheney boosts Renzi's coffers
Vice president uses 'mandate'
Jon Kamman
The Arizona Republic
May. 7, 2005 12:00 AM
Vice President Dick Cheney came to the Valley on Friday, gave a 15-minute speech on how he and President Bush are using their re-election "mandate" and left Congressman Rick Renzi's campaign treasury at least a quarter-million dollars richer.
The fund-raiser brought the Flagstaff Republican's campaign bank balance to about $700,000, with the election still 18 months away.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0507cheney07.html
Time, money, and the Big Dig
By Joan Vennochi, Globe Columnist April 26, 2005
DID BIG DIG project overseers cut corners to save time and money?
ADVERTISEMENT
US Representative Stephen F. Lynch believes the answer to that question is yes: that at some point, pressure to get the project done distracted Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff from getting the project done right.
''Under the pressure and scrutiny of a lot of people, they went back to look at areas where they could reduce cost in areas of material and time," said Lynch, a South Boston Democrat, in the aftermath of the Big Dig congressional hearing he brought to Boston on April 22.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/26/time_money_and_the_big_dig/
Reilly at odds with inspector general over $744 million refund
Friday, April 29, 2005
Attorney General Tom Reilly, while testifying at a congressional hearing, recently declined to estimate how much money he can recover from Big Dig contractors. Reilly said he would not "speculate."
However, the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Transportation, has said the project should be able to recover about $744 million in cost overruns from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff and other contractors.
"Tom Reilly won't say how much Massachusetts is owed because he's afraid he won't live up to expectations. Based on his testimony today, there is no reason to think he'll come close to the $744 million refund that taxpayers deserve," said Tim O'Brien, executive director of the Mass GOP. "Today, Congress learned what taxpayers in Massachusetts already know: Matt Amorello can't do the job, Tom Reilly isn't doing the job, and Gov. Romney was right all along when he called for new leadership and an end to the Turnpike Authority."
http://www2.townonline.com/allston/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=236508
IRAQ: Making a killing: the big business of war
Doug Lorimer
While nearly 100,000 Iraqis and 1600 US troops have died as a result of the Iraq war and tens of thousands have been severely wounded, the war has proven to be extremely lucrative for the Houston-based oil services company Halliburton and the San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel. These are the two largest private contractors to the US occupation forces in Iraq.
Iraq war and “reconstruction” contracts helped Halliburton to turn a profit in the first quarter of this year, after the company suffered a loss of US$65 million in the first quarter of last year after paying out $4.2 billion in asbestos lawsuit settlements.
Until 2000, Halliburton was headed by US Vice-President Dick Cheney. On April 15, Cheney released his 2004 tax return. It showed that he received $194,852 in deferred payments from Halliburton, only slightly less than the $203,000 he earned as vice-president.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/625/625p20.htm
Less hot air
Star-Telegram
Federal air quality regulations are downright Byzantine.
It's difficult for Americans to know just how clean their air is. It's probably even harder to determine how good -- or bad -- a job government agencies are doing in enforcing anti-pollution measures.
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/10447834.htm
Al-Qaeda renews threat to Saudi oil supplies
By Mark Huband in London
Published: December 19 2004 21:00 Last updated: December 19 2004 21:00
Militants linked to al-Qaeda on Sunday renewed a threat to attack Saudi oil supplies, in a defiant challenge to the intense security put in place to defend the kingdom's production facilities.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bebf4942-5200-11d9-961a-00000e2511c8.html
Laden targets oil to bleed US
[ MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2004 01:59:47 AM]
BERLIN: Osama bin Laden claims to have bled the Soviet Union into bankruptcy as an Islamic guerrilla fighter in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Could he do the same to another hated superpower — the US?
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/964274.cms
Iraq's oil network hit after al-Qaeda call
December 20, 2004
Iraq's oil infrastructure suffered five attacks in 24 hours after a voice identified as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden ordered followers to sabotage the West's key supplies.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Iraqs-oil-network-hit-after-alQaeda-call/2004/12/19/1103391641019.html
Oil to push up inflation rate
A leading economist predicted over the weekend that the inflation rate, which represents the increases in consumer prices, would top the 7.6-percent registered in November, as the full impact of high oil prices begin to affect prices of food and other major commodities in the holiday season.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?section=BUSINESS&oid=65309
Iraq spoiling Bush plans
[ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2004 11:09:57 PM ]
WASHINGTON: The deadly attack on a US military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday scrambled the Bush administration's hopes of showing progress toward stability there, while making clear that the war is creating a nasty array of problems for President Bush as he gears up for an ambitious second term.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/968314.cms
Bush plans January blitz for Social Security reform
Campaign will keep details vague
By David Morgan, Reuters December 22, 2004
WASHINGTON -- President Bush will spearhead an election-style public relations campaign early next year to try to convince Americans that Social Security is in urgent need of change but will keep dollar and cent details deliberately vague, analysts and officials say.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/12/22/bush_plans_january_blitz_for_social_security_reform/
FBI email embroils Bush in jail abuse
Correspondents in Washington
December 23, 2004
THE White House says it expects new documented accounts of torture at Guantanamo Bay to be "fully investigated", but has denied claims George W. Bush personally approved the use of abusive methods against detainees at the US prison camp.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11765305%255E2703,00.html
Bush will face major foreign policy challenges beyond war on terror
BY WARREN P. STROBEL
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - President Bush is facing a broader and more complex array of foreign policy challenges in his second term than he did four years ago, and he may have limited leverage to achieve some U.S. global goals.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/10477840.html
Crisis Group Challenges Bush's Iraq Policy
BARRY SCHWEID
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The growing insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq is fed by nationalist feelings and widespread distrust of the United States, the private International Crisis Group said Wednesday.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/10477767.htm
Bush plans five day Europe visit
A RELIABLE diplomatic source has revealed that US president George
Bush will spend five days touring Europe in February, including a visit to Bratislava for a US-Russia summit meeting with Vladimir Putin, according to the daily Pravda.
http://www.slovakspectator.sk/clanok.asp?cl=18278
Governor ducks class
FLORIDA TODAY Readers
Jeb still clueless on education
I see that Gov. Jeb Bush wants to repeal the school class-size reduction amendment passed by Florida voters in 2002, a move that would help ensure the state's education system remains second rate.
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/opedstory1218WCLASSLETS.htm
Far from finished
Florida lawmakers must dig in to accomplish true hurricane-insurance reform
http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/opedstory1218WLEGISLATURE.htm
Drive To Stop Bush's 'Pinochet Plan'
To Loot Social Security
by Paul Gallagher
A monstrous delusion, in the service of saving a falling U.S. dollar and a bankrupt international monetary system, was presented by George W. Bush's so-called Economic Summit on Dec. 15-16. A lock-step parade of globalization ideologues, beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, claimed a "great recovery" for the crisis-ridden U.S. economy—and then demanded to save the dollar by grabbing trillions of dollars from the Social Security benefit funds of tens of millions of Americans. Even the seldom-truthful President said, "Do it for Wall Street," in his Dec. 16 speech concluding the "summit" and calling for Social Security privatization. The summit capped a 10-day period in which Bush devoted four major public meetings and two additional Presidential addresses to a manic rush to force privatization plans on the Congress.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2004/site_packages/ss_privatization/3150lar_v_bush.html
The Conservative Case Against George W. Bush
BY WILLIAM BRYK
POLITICS 8.6.2004
Theodore Roosevelt, that most virile of presidents, insisted that, "To announce that there should be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American people." With that in mind, I say: George W. Bush is no conservative, and his unprincipled abandonment of conservatism under the pressure of events is no statesmanship. The Republic would be well-served by his defeat this November.
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=300
Feds wary of Hub's Big Dig money pit
By Casey Ross
Friday, December 17, 2004
Revelations of Big Dig construction blunders are continuing to mount while irate federal officials are promising to withhold $81 million in funding until state project managers define the true scope and cost of leak problems.
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=59339
The List 2004
6 Bush Scandals To Come
by David Corn
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
The curse of the second term — it’s been around for decades. Clinton had Monica. Reagan had Iran-Contra. Nixon had Watergate. So what will be the "best" scandals of the Bush administration in the coming year or so? Here’s a look ahead.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/05/the-corn.php
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