Never mind the environment - there's money to be made!
Outrageous! The Bush administration has done it again - reversed 40 years of US Forest Service history, by striking a deal to destroy thousands of acres of mountain forestland to build residential subdivisions in Montana. The Washington Post reports the deal was struck behind closed doors between Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who oversees the U.S. Forest Service and Plum Creek Timber Co., a former logging company turned real estate investment trust that is building homes. Plum Creek owns more than 8 million acres nationwide, including 1.2 million acres in the mountains of western Montana, where local officials were stunned and outraged at the deal.
"We have 40 years of Forest Service history that has been reversed in the last three months," said Pat O'Herren, an official in Missoula County, which is threatening to sue the Forest Service for forgoing environmental assessments and other procedures that would have given the public a voice in the matter. Read the full story here.
Edwards to debate Rove
The Buffalo News reports that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards will debate Republican spin-meister Karl Rove Sept. 26 at the University of Buffalo as part of the school’s Distinguished Speakers Series. In the midst of the U.S. attorney scandal, Edwards called on President Bush to “fire Karl Rove.” When Rove announced he was resigning from the White House, Edwards released a statement: “Goodbye, good riddance.”
Of course, Rove is still trying to shape history - as a commentator for Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal and directing John McCain's campaign for Bush's third term. Wonder what those 14 lobbyists on McCain's staff think about Rove bossing them around?
Meanwhile, Rove is in violation of a congressional subpoena and could face contempt proceedings, House Democratic leaders said. The House Commercial and Administrative Law subcommittee, part of the Judiciary committee, has sought Rove’s testimony since a 60 Minutes television report linked him to allegedly politically-motivated prosecution of the Alabama governor. A subpoena was issued after failing to work out a deal with Rove’s lawyer. Rove claims "executive privilege," even though he no longer works at the White House.
In a letter to Luskin, Conyers and Sanchez said, “We want to make clear that the subcommittee will convene as scheduled and expects Mr. Rove to appear and that a refusal to appear in violation of the subpoena could subject Mr. Rove to contempt proceedings, including statutory contempt under federal law and proceedings under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives.”
AP's sloppy reporting continues
What has happened to the Associated Press? The news agency once was the standard-bearer for journalism standards. Yet in the American presidential campaign, we've seen AP reporters Nedra Pickler, Liz Sidoti, Jennifer Loven and Steven Hurst either get their facts wrong or deliberately distort them - even after they've been proven wrong! This is sloppy, careless, biased reporting. Where are the AP editors and why are they allowing such erroneous stories to be distributed to newspapers around the country?
John McCain's absurd campaign claim
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo dissects John McCain's latest absurd campaign promise:
"...Today John McCain is getting lots of press for his new plan to balance the budget during his first term -- what can only be called an extraordinarily ambitious promise. The first pick was from Mike Allen's piece late last night in The Politico.
"Now, the general routine is the face of this kind of candidate announcement is that journalists and economists look at the numbers to see if they add up. In most cases, the exercises generates fairly unsatisfying contradictory opinions, with some experts saying one thing and other experts another.
"But here's the thing. McCain doesn't have any numbers. None. Not vague numbers of fuzzy math. He just says he's going to do it. Any other candidate would get laughed off the stage with that kind of nonsense or more likely reporters just wouldn't agree to give them a write up. But this is all over the place.
"The simple truth is that given his foreign policy promises in Iraq and tax cut promises at home there's really no way McCain could come up with even a fuzzy plan to balance the budget in his first term. So he's decided instead just promise it. Included in his white paper is just the standard hocum about cutting waste, fraud and abuse in government and making sure we have "reasonable economic growth."
"Remember, this is the guy who's riding on his reputation for 'straight talk'. And he's just promised that he'll balance the budget in his first term. For any serious reporter covering this campaign that should immediately lead to a request for actual numbers to back up how he's going to accomplish that.
"As I noted last night, one of McCain's vague assertions was that he "would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit." So what are the numbers behind that? We just asked the McCain campaign and the response we got was ...
"It's pretty straightforward, as we win, costs will go down with a smaller footprint over time, and those savings will go to deficit reduction. It's really the logical extension of Senator McCain's position as articulated in the 2013 speech. Achieving success in Iraq would obviously lead to reduced expenditures on the effort."
"This is what's behind McCain's promise. I'll do a lot of things that will get the deficit down. One of them is the the guarantee of victories in Iraq and Afghanistan and obviously that will save a lot of money.
"As I said, this is the reductio ad absurdum of the mad pass John McCain gets on everything. He's pledging to balance the budget in four years and when asked for details he says, 'We'll get back to you on that.'"
